Is there a Future for Chemical Qubits? ⚛⚗️

UCLA might be pioneering the future.

Photo by Chromatograph on Unsplash

Hey Everyone,

I’m really passionate about innovation. This doesn’t even begin at startups, it begins in research labs, at Universities and in the passionate work of researchers. Every now and again a story passes us that we know could be something big.

Let’s dream a little bit. Quantum computing, though still in its early days, has the potential to dramatically increase processing power by harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales.

The field of quantum information science (QIS) has gained significant interest in the chemistry community over recent years. In late August I noticed news on this that felt really different.

Here we are talking about the work of Anastassia N. Alexandrova. I’m very interested in women in Quantum computing and I’ve noticed they are taking more leadership roles than in artificial intelligence in general.

I think Quantum technology will have a huge impact on chemistry and biotechnology. We are just at the beginning. So now according to the UCLA Newsroom reported August 23th, 2022. The National Science Foundation has awarded UCLA $1.8 million over three years to establish the Center for Advanced Molecular Architectures for Quantum Information Science, to be led by chemistry professor Anastassia Alexandrova.

This is an incredible project. Chemical systems well-suited for this purpose fall into a variety of material classifications and qubit-formation mechanisms, from altering the spin of an electron to leveraging the polarization of photons.

🧪 TL;DR

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been researching a new type of molecular based qubit called a quantum functional group. This consists of molecular fragments which which can be attached to molecules or surfaces to form qubits.

So let’s try and dig into this topic in a bit more detail, shall we?

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