Over at Phys.org they're reporting on a paper (abstract only, pay walled) published in Nature Communications last July.
From the Phys.Org writeup:
An odd, iridescent material that's puzzled physicists for decades turns out to be an exotic state of matter that could open a new path to quantum computers and other next-generation electronics.
Physicists at the University of Michigan have discovered or confirmed several properties of the compound samarium hexaboride that raise hopes for finding the silicon of the quantum era. They say their results also close the case of how to classify the material—a mystery that has been investigated since the late 1960s.
The researchers provide the first direct evidence that samarium hexaboride, abbreviated SmB6, is a topological insulator. Topological insulators are, to physicists, an exciting class of solids that conduct electricity like a metal across their surface, but block the flow of current like rubber through their interior. They behave in this two-faced way despite that their chemical composition is the same throughout.
I'm not a (quantum) materials scientist, but this sounds pretty interesting. Perhaps someone with real knowledge of the subject could chime in?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 07 2014, @06:01AM
As soon as reliable quantum transistors can be created using existing lithography methods, chips with millions/billions of quantum transistors and qubits will appear.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 07 2014, @01:13PM
Scaling for quantum computing is much harder than scaling for classical computers. A small perturbation of a classical bit only affects that single bit. But a small perturbation of a quantum bit may easily destroy the complete quantum state, nullifying any quantum computing advantage.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday December 07 2014, @06:07AM
...goodbye cryptography? ...or at least the sort that's breakable with Shor's algorithm (ie. pretty much everything).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday December 07 2014, @09:55AM
My thought too. Otoh, there lattice cryptos.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday December 07 2014, @05:24PM
cryptography will be fine. see Post-quantum cryptography [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday December 07 2014, @06:42PM
There will never be enough noise-free quantum gates to run shor's algorithm on any size of problem that's currently being used for security. (Say 2048-bit RSA/DH/EG)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 07 2014, @01:05PM
I'm not myself an expert in topological insulators, but I'm in contact with such people all the time, so I know a bit about them.
The following is a bit misleading:
At the border, the chemical composition by definition changes (to that of the surrounding material; here vacuum is just a special "material". It is true that the conducting layer is still inside the material, but the point is that near the border you have already influence from the outside, and therefore (in any material) the border behaves a bit different than the interior. For topological insulators this different behaviour results in conducting states in an otherwise insulating substance (this is, indeed, special to them), provided the material on the other side of the border isn't a topological insulator itself.
However the most interesting thing is not just that they conduct at the surface (if that would be all, you could just put a small metal layer on top of an insulator to get the same). The interesting thing is that the electron spin (a quantum property of electrons) is coupled to the direction of movement of the electron. It is this special property which makes topological insulators interesting to spintronics (as the name already implies, spintronics is specifically about using the spin).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by BK on Monday December 08 2014, @02:55AM
Who knew? [wikipedia.org]
...but you HAVE heard of me.