How Superconductive 3D Printing Is Advancing Quantum Computing

Nanoscale Manufacturing: Building the Future Atom by Atom

As scientists developed an increasing mastery over the material world, more and more precision is expected from our manufacturing process. From crudely forging metal in forges, we are now controlling individual atoms to form advanced sensors, transistors, etc.

Another consequence of this increasing level of control is the possibility of fundamentally altering the properties of a material. We are now familiar with how a thin layer of silicon can be made to “think” by turning it into a computer chip.

Other changes are possible, notably giving materials natural characteristics that they would never spontaneously have in nature. One way to do this is by changing their structure at the nanoscale level.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the Institute for Emerging Electronic Technologies (Germany), and the University of Vienna (Austria) have found that they can turn a material into a superconductor by changing its 3D configuration, building complex nanostructures.

They announced their discovery in Advanced Function Material¹, under the title “Reconfigurable Three-Dimensional Superconducting Nanoarchitectures”.

Why 3D Nanostructures Are Key to Breaking 2D Technology Limits

Many nanoscale systems are designed as simple 2D sheets, allowing scientists to manipulate them precisely.

However, the extension to three dimensions offers an opportunity to overcome fundamental limitations and achieve new functionalities.

For example, limitations in semiconductor miniaturization have meant that 2D devices no longer follow Moore’s law. Instead, the industry moved to 3D-stacked CMOS for higher device density and interconnectivity.

Similarly, in optics, 3D metamaterials offer new control over the properties of light, like broadband polarization or negative refractive indices, each with their own wide potential applications.

The same is now true with conductors and superconductors, with the building of a process working like a 3D nano printer, building structures not on a flat surface but in 3D.

Quantum Effects in 3D Superconductive Structures

Quantum particle physics theories have already predicted that 3D structures would behave very differently from 2D ones. This is especially true for superconductors, materials without any electrical resistance, where 3D structures were expected to allow for local control over superconducting vortices.

The discovery of this type of “magnetic vortex” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003, which was a key breakthrough in explaining how superconductivity works.

Source: Nobel Prize

3D structuring of superconducting material should also create entirely new quantum phenomena (like the “nodal state in a superconducting Möbius strip“) that researchers could then use to develop practical applications.

How Scientists Built a 3D Nanoprinter for Superconductors

The researchers used 3D focused electron beam induced deposition (3D FEBID), a known method for building 3D nanostructures that has not been used for superconducting materials until now.

They built a pyramid-shaped structure with 4 nanoscopic filaments supporting each other. It is made of superconducting tungsten-carbide (W-C)