A team of physicists at Rice University have created an "electron superhighway" that could one day be useful for building a quantum computer -- a machine that would utilize quantum particles instead of the digital transistors in today's microchips. Rui-Rui Du, a professor of physics and astronomy, and graduate student Ivan Knez describe the new method for making the device, known as "quantum spin Hall topological insulator," in a recent paper. The device acts as an electron superhighway -- one of the building blocks necessary to create quantum particles that can store and manipulate data.
