Physicists Create Molecule That Shouldn't Be Possible, But Could Help Quantum Computing
By 1nf3rn0 It never ceases to amaze me how scientists seem to know where their discoveries will lead – or how long they’ll spend tilting at windmills. What’s even more startling is that sometimes they actually hit the target after trying for decades without success. And here we are, with another huge breakthrough – something scientists couldn’t make until they could. And now that they can, they could change the world.
IBM physicists have created an odd, triangular molecule that chemists have been chasing for 70 years – triangulene.
Triangulene closely resembles graphene. They’re both only an atom thick and have atoms arranged in hexagons.
To make the triangulene, the researchers took a precursor sample and loaded it onto a copper surface coated with salt, in a vacuum, at low temperatures.
When the researchers tested the molecule’s magnetic properties, they discovered that the two free electrons could spin in different directions. The directions of the spin can stand in for the “1s” and “0s” that traditionally control electronics – so information could be coded onto these molecules, a key factor for quantum computing.
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