This is a preview issue of Quantum Campus, sharing the latest in quantum science and technology. Read by more than 1,500 researchers, we publish on Fridays and are always looking for news from across the country. Want to see your work featured? Submit your ideas to the editor.

Tech Hubs

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that approximately $210 million in funding would be rescinded for the six most recent tech hubs awarded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Lutnick claimed that the process for these awards, made in the final days of the Biden administration, was “rushed, opaque, and unfair.” The Tech Hubs program will be revamped “to prioritize national security, project quality, benefit to the taxpayer, and a fair process.” New selections are expected in 2026, and the organizations that had their work stopped will have the opportunity to reapply.

Stopped projects include a $23.8 million award to a consortium made up of the University of Vermont, the State of Vermont, GlobalFoundries, and other companies. It would have focused on gallium nitride-based chips often considered in next-generation optical, nanoscale, and spintronics applications. Funding focused on aerospace, agricultural, biomedical, energy, and microfluidics applications was also rescinded, including hubs based in Alabama, Oregon, Missouri, Maine, and a mulistate consortium in the Pacific Northwest. 

Due to the federal government’s recent deletions of historical materials from government websites, some links in this story rely on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Diamond thin films

An international collaboration led by Rice University published a new technique to separate a thin layer of diamond from a larger crystal. Instead of using the traditional high-temperature annealing, they grew an epilayer of diamond atop a diamond substrate after ion implantation.

“We found that diamond overgrowth converts the buried damage layer into a thin graphitic sheet, removing the need for energy‑heavy annealing,” Rice’s Xiang Zhang said in an announcement. “The resulting diamond film is purer and higher-quality than the original diamond, matching the electronic-grade quality[, and could] serve as the foundation for quantum computers.”

This work was published in Advanced Functional Materials.

Intrinsic topological superconductors

Researchers at the University of Oxford developed a new technique for identifying intrinsic topological superconductors, materials that provide a platform for qubits that are resistant to quantum decoherence. The team verified that the superconductor uranium ditelluride is indeed an intrinsic topological superconductor, using scanning tunneling microscopy and a new operating mode invented at Oxford.

This work was published in Science.

Quantum Technology Center

Capital News Service profiled Ronald Walsworth, director of the University of Maryland’s Quantum Technology Center and one of the key people behind the state’s “push to become the world’s quantum capital.” Walsworth, a leading near-vacancy diamond researcher, is founder of a for-profit tech accelerator called Quantum Catalyzer and EuQlid, which is a quantum sensing startup.

Quickbits

• Topological Quantum Batteries (PRL)

• Are entangled qubits following a quantum Moore's law? (New Scientist)

• Infleqtion raises $100 million, pairs with SAIC for defense sales (Reuters)

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