Quantum Materials and Future Technologies

在过去的二十年里，不列颠哥伦比亚大学(UBC)建立了一个杰出的理论和实验量子材料研究小组。UBC量子物质研究所已成为全球卓越研究中心，有可能在计算、电子、医学和可持续能源领域推动一场新的技术革命。 加拿大第一卓越研究基金的投资将使UBC能够在其国际公认的领先研究人员团队的工作基础上再接再厉。这笔资金将使该大学能够吸引和留住量子物质研究领域最聪明的人才，扩大新的和现有的国际合作伙伴关系，特别是著名的马克斯·普朗克-UBC量子材料中心，并培训下一代量子物质研究人员。 这笔资金将支持整个研究生命周期。这包括扩大研究团队在调查和了解新量子材料基本性质方面的现有核心实力。它还将让该团队更加重视控制量子材料和工程设备，这些材料和工程设备可以作为应用研究和技术开发的起点。最终，它将导致与工业合作伙伴和衍生公司将这些发现转化为新的应用和产品，产生社会、环境和经济影响。 量子材料具有广泛的惊人的电子和磁性，这些性质引发了挑战凝聚态物理学的最深刻的科学问题。虽然经典物理学在更大的宏观尺度上描述了物质和能量的正常行为，但量子物理学解释了发生在原子水平上的不寻常现象。 量子效应在极端条件下更明显，比如在低温下，但也可以通过将材料层限制为单个原子的厚度，并检查以原子精度逐层建造的材料之间的界面上发生的事情来增强量子效应。 通过控制量子材料，研究人员可以将核磁共振扫描仪从花园小屋的大小缩小到笔记本电脑的大小，开发超高效电网，或者节省超导材料，如用于磁悬浮列车的超导材料，以及其他应用。这些材料还可能导致各种更高效、更强大的计算和电子设备，如高性能电池和超级电容器、超低功率/高速晶体管、新的计算体系结构和超灵敏生物传感器。 就像硅是微电子时代的基础和硅谷作为经济强国的崛起一样，量子材料中出现的一系列更丰富的性质有可能彻底改变当前的技术。 基金对量子物质研究所的投资-一个已经被公认为其领域的全球领导者的团队-将加强UBC和加拿大作为这一革命性领域的发起人和创新者的角色，并将有助于培育以UBC为中心的高科技量子材料研究中心，使当地、国家和全球社区受益。

The University of British Columbia (UBC) has established an outstanding theoretical and experimental quantum materials research group over the past two decades. The UBC Quantum Matter Institute has become a global hub of research excellence, with the potential to spur a new technological revolution in computing, electronics, medicine and sustainable energy. The Canada First Research Excellence Fund investment will enable UBC to build on the work of its internationally recognized team of leading researchers. The funding will allow the university to attract and retain the brightest minds in quantum matter research, expand new and existing international partnerships, especially the prestigious Max Planck-UBC Center for Quantum Materials, and train the next generation of quantum matter researchers. The funding will support the entire research lifecycle. This includes expanding on the research team’s existing core strength of investigating and understanding the fundamental properties of new quantum materials. It will also let the team increase their emphasis on controlling quantum materials and engineering devices that can serve as starting points for applied research and technology development. Ultimately, it will lead to translating these discoveries, with industrial partners and spin-off companies, into new applications and products that generate social, environmental and economic impacts. Quantum materials have a wide range of astonishing electronic and magnetic properties that evoke the most profound scientific questions challenging condensed matter physics. While classical physics describes the normal behavior of matter and energy at the larger, macroscopic scale, quantum physics explains unusual phenomena that take place at the atomic level. Quantum effects are more obvious under extreme conditions, such as at low temperatures, but can also be enhanced by restricting layers of material to single atoms in thickness, and examining what happens at the interfaces between materials constructed layer-by-layer with atomic precision. By controlling quantum materials, researchers could reduce MRI scanners from the size of a garden shed to the size of a laptop, develop super-efficient electrical grids, or economize on superconductive materials like the ones used in magnetic levitation trains, among other applications. These materials could also lead to a wide range of more efficient and powerful computing and electronic devices, such as high-performance batteries and supercapacitors, ultra-low power / high-speed transistors, new computing architectures, and ultrasensitive biosensors. In the same way silicon was the basis of the microelectronics era and the rise of Silicon Valley as an economic power, the far richer set of properties emerging in quantum materials has the potential to completely revolutionize current technologies. The Fund investment in the Quantum Matter Institute—a team already acknowledged as a global leader in its field—will enhance UBC and Canada’s role as an originator and innovator in this revolutionary field, and will help foster a high-tech quantum materials research epicentre around UBC with benefits to local, national and global communities.