April 7 - 11, 2025
Seattle, Washington
2025 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit

Symposium QT06-Defects in Solid-State Materials for Quantum Technologies

Point defects in solid-state materials are recognized as one of the most promising platforms for quantum sensing and quantum network technologies. Understanding and controlling these optically-addressable spins associated with atom-like systems in solids enables revolutionary quantum technologies. In this symposium, we will focus on several important aspects of solid-state defects as qubits for quantum technologies. First, we will focus on state of the art host materials for spin defects including wide bandgap semiconductors such as diamond and silicon carbide, intermediate band gap semiconductors such as silicon, as well as oxides and two-dimensional materials. Each system has its unique opportunities and challenges. Control of crystalline quality and residual impurity concentrations remain to be a challenge of all host materials. Second, we will discuss both intrinsic defects and extrinsic dopants, including s-p defects, transition metals, and rare-earth quantum emitters. Rare-earth ions (REI) exhibit characteristic sharp emission lines and long coherence. Detection and control of single REI can be coupled with photonic crystal resonators for emission rate enhancement. The rapid materials discovery can be facilitated by accurate ab-initio theory which predicts critical physical parameters. Recent advancement of electronic structure theory shows promise in tackling strong electron correlation, complex excited-state potential energy surfaces, excited-state kinetics, and spin relaxation and decoherences of defect systems. Third, controlling spin defects’ properties through surface sciences and enhancement of spin qubits’ coherence and use for entanglement distribution will be discussed. Long relaxation and coherence time is needed for stable manipulation of qubits at room temperature. How to control the decoherence pathway has been an active key topic for decades. Meanwhile qubit entanglement via light and interfacing with superconducting qubits are viable approaches for information transduction and quantum networking.

Topics will include:

  • Spin defects in silicon, silicon carbide, diamond, oxides, and 2D materials
  • Rare earth ions quantum emitters
  • Molecular qubits
  • Growth, fabrication, and optimization of solid-state materials as hosts
  • Computational approaches to understanding optically-active defects
  • Surface science and quantum sensing with defects
  • Materials for superconducting qubits and interfaces with spin qubits
  • Solid-state qubits entanglement and networks
  • Identification and control of decoherence

Invited Speakers:

  • Mete Atatüre (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • David Awschalom (The University of Chicago, USA)
  • Mihir Bhaskar (AWS Center for Quantum Networking, USA)
  • Songtao Chen (Rice University, USA)
  • Kyeongjae Cho (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
  • Jennifer Choy (University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA)
  • Cyrus Dreyer (Stony Brook University, The State University of New York, USA)
  • Danna Freedman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
  • Adam Gali (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary)
  • Giulia Galli (The University of Chicago, USA)
  • Elizabeth Goldschmidt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Supratik Guha (The University of Chicago, USA)
  • Joseph Heremans (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)
  • Alex High (The University of Chicago, USA)
  • Evelyn Hu (Harvard University, USA)
  • Viktor Ivády (Linköping University, Sweden)
  • Zeeshawn Kazi (Princeton University, USA)
  • Shimon Kolkowitz (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
  • Tongcang Li (Purdue University, USA)
  • Peter Maurer (The University of Chicago, USA)
  • Hosung Seo (Ajou University, Republic of Korea)
  • David Strubbe (University of California, Merced, USA)
  • Susumu Takahashi (University of Southern California, USA)
  • Jelena Vuckovic (Stanford University, USA)
  • Chris Van de Walle (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
  • Qimin Yan (Northeastern University, USA)

Symposium Organizers

Yuan Ping
University of Wisconsin–Madison
USA

Chris Anderson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
USA

Kai-Mei Fu
University of Washington
USA

Jeffrey McCallum
The University of Melbourne
School of Physics
Australia

Topics

crystal growth decoherence defects diamond ion-implantation qubit spin