Chlorine-based electrolytes like the one shown here are offering improved performance for solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Credit: Linda Nazar/University of Waterloo
In the quest for the perfect battery, scientists have two primary goals: create a device that can store a great deal of energy and do it safely. Many batteries contain liquid electrolytes, which are potentially flammable.
As a result, solid-state lithium-ion batteries, which consist of entirely solid components, have become increasingly attractive to scientists because they offer an enticing combination of higher safety and increased energy density—which is how much energy the battery can store for a given volume.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo, Canada, who are members of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), headquartered at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, have discovered a new solid electrolyte that offers several important advantages.
This electrolyte, composed of lithium, scandium, indium and chlorine, conducts lithium ions well but electrons poorly. This combination is essential to creating an all-solid-state battery that functions without significantly losing capacity for over a hundred cycles at high voltage (above 4 volts) and thousands of cycles at intermediate voltage.
The chloride nature of the electrolyte is key to its stability at operating conditions above 4 volts—meaning it is suitable for typical cathode materials that form the mainstay of today’s lithium-ion cells.
“The main attraction of a solid-state electrolyte is that it can’t catch fire, and it allows for efficient placement in the battery cell; we were pleased to demonstrate stable high-voltage operation,” said Linda Nazar, a Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at UWaterloo and a long-time member of JCESR.
Current iterations of solid-state electrolytes focus heavily on sulfides, which oxidize and degrade above 2.5 volts. Therefore, they require the incorporation of an insulating coating around the cathode material that operates above 4 volts, which impairs the ability of electrons and lithium ions to move from the electrolyte and into the cathode.
“With sulfide electrolytes, you have a kind of conundrum—you want to electronically isolate the electrolyte from the cathode so it doesn’t oxidize, but you still require electronic conductivity in the cathode material,” Nazar said.
While Nazar’s group wasn’t the first to devise a chloride electrolyte, the decision to swap out half of the indium for scandium based on their previous work proved to be a winner in terms of lower electronic and higher ionic conductivity. “Chloride electrolytes have become increasingly attractive because they oxidize only at high voltages, and some are chemically compatible with the best cathodes we have,” Nazar said. “There’s been a few of them reported recently, but we designed one with distinct advantages.
One chemical key to the ionic conductivity lay in the material’s crisscrossing 3D structure called a spinel. The researchers had to balance two competing desires—to load the spinel with as many charge carrying ions as possible, but also to leave sites open for the ions to move through. “You might think of it like trying to a host a dance—you want people to come, but you don’t want it to be too crowded,” Nazar said.
According to Nazar, an ideal situation would be to have half the sites in the spinel structure be lithium occupied while the other half remained open, but she explained that creating that situation is hard to design.
In addition to the good ionic conductivity of the lithium, Nazar and her colleagues needed to make sure that the electrons could not move easily through the electrolyte to trigger its decomposition at high voltage. “Imagine a game of hopscotch,” she said. “Even if you’re only trying to hop from the first square to the second square, if you can create a wall that makes it difficult for the electrons, in our case, to jump over, that is another advantage of this solid electrolyte.”
Nazar said that it is not yet clear why the electronic conductivity is lower than many previously reported chloride electrolytes, but it helps establish a clean interface between the cathode material and solid electrolyte, a fact that is largely responsible for the stable performance even with high amounts of active material in the cathode.
A paper based on the research, “High areal capacity, long cycle life 4 V ceramic all-solid-state Li-ion batteries enabled by chloride solid electrolytes,” appeared in the January 3 online edition of Nature Energy.
Other authors of the paper include Nazar’s graduate student, Laidong Zhou, a JCESR member who was responsible for the majority of the work, and Se Young Kim, Chun Yuen Kwok and Abdeljalil Assoud, all of UWaterloo. Additional authors included Tong-Tong Zuo and Professor Juergen Janek of Justus Liebig University, Germany and Qiang Zhang of the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
More information: Laidong Zhou et al, High areal capacity, long cycle life 4 V ceramic all-solid-state Li-ion batteries enabled by chloride solid electrolytes, Nature Energy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00952-0
Waterloo companies power past Stanford, MIT and Harvard in key metric
Ahhh …. Those wily Canadians! Surpassing MIT, Stanford and Silicon Valley
Investors looking for higher returns might be wiser to look to Waterloo companies than ventures started by alumni at Stanford, MIT and Harvard.
A new report from a U.S. platform for investors and startups has found that ventures founded by Waterloo alumni produce a higher-than-expected return on investment than their counterparts at the three American institutions.
The data from AngelList Venture show Waterloo startups generate outsized ROI for their investors, with an average excess markup rate 13 per cent higher than the baseline at 12 and 36 months.
Only the University of Washington ranked higher with a rate of 21 per cent, while Brown University came in third with an 11.5 per cent excess markup rate. Two other Canadian universities made the ranking, with University of Toronto coming in at 16th and McGill University at 19th.
The platform considers an investment on its list to be marked up if it does an equity round at a higher price per share in a future fundraise. The rate is a strong indication of how an investment is performing, the company says.
“This speaks highly of Waterloo founders’ ability to thrive here in southwestern Ontario, well outside of Silicon Valley, New-York or Boston,” said Vivek Goel, president and vice-chancellor of the University. “Waterloo companies like ApplyBoard, Vidyard and Clearco are paving the way for future founders who want to grow within Canada, helping to increase the prominence of the Toronto-Waterloo tech ecosystem on the global stage.”
The findings indicate that Waterloo founders are being underestimated or undervalued by investors, said Alex Norman, a partner at N49P and co-founder of TechTO. “As investors see more and more University of Waterloo founders succeed, this may lead to more teams being funded or higher valuations for early-stage companies.”
While Canadian founders might be initially passed over by U.S. investors, great results for Waterloo founders over time are allowing early supporters to reap outsized rewards.
“It is no longer a secret that the University of Waterloo is a top school for innovative talent in North America,” said John Dick, director of Concept, the University’s experiential entrepreneurship program.
Young companies will continue to flourish in Waterloo Region through the University’s Campus Innovation Ecosystem and Velocity Incubator, which offer many problem-solving and venture-building opportunities, he said.
While founders with Waterloo pedigrees might not see the same level of investor demand as those at larger institutions in the U.S. AngelList says that can make them undervalued, “meaning that investors willing to back the founders from these institutions may have an opportunity to capture some excess returns.”
The findings come at an eventful time for Velocity, the University’s flagship entrepreneurial incubator, which announced recently that the total amount of funding raised by Velocity companies surpassed $2.4 billion. The incubator took almost a decade to reach the $1-billion mark but less than two years to reach $2 billion, showing an acceleration in both deal numbers and sizes. Velocity is expecting an alumni company to go through IPO for the first time later this year.
Velocity started its own pre-seed venture fund in 2019, and 18 out of 19 companies they have invested in so far received meaningful follow-on investments, highlighting the program’s ability to support early-stage founders and help them turn ideas and prototypes into marketable, scalable companies.
That’s the idea behind an anti-viral surface coating being developed in a collaborative project between by researchers at The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) within the University of Waterloo and SiO2 Innovation Labs.
The coating will kill the COVID-19 virus immediately upon contact with any surface.
According to Dr. Sushanta Mitra, Professor of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and lead researcher on the project.
“The COVID-19 virus can survive on surfaces for 24 hours or more. In order to protect front-line workers and the general public, it’s important that the virus be neutralized immediately when it comes into contact with any surface. Our work will culminate in the production of an anti-viral coating that will do just that.”
Dr. Sushanta Mitra
This research is multi-faceted and is being conducted by many different researchers at Waterloo, including chemical engineering professor Boxin Zhao and chemistry professor John Honek.
In a recent interview, Mitra said he thinks it will be six or seven months before preparations can be made to bring the product to market and he notes the huge advantages of working with SiO2 Innovation Labs, whose commercial and industrial coatings are made here.
“They already make materials to kill pathogens such as e-coli, they make anti-bacterial and anti-microbial coatings … We want the product to be made in Canada to help Canadians fight COVID, and hopefully make it available to the global community,” said Mitra.
In a release from SiO2 Innovation Labs, CTO Bruce Johnston said: “We’re thrilled to be collaborating with Professor Mitra and WIN in order to bring to market a surface coating that can neutralize pathogens quickly and their subsequent spread. Reduced infection rates will save lives and create safer environments in public and private spaces including homes, the work place, schools, stores, public transit and hospitality venues.
“Our history of creating and delivering safe, sustainable and environmentally friendly products is enabling us to meet this historic moment.”
Mitra’s research involves droplet transmission, viral load and interaction with various surfaces. The coating being developed will prevent droplet adherence even as it destroys the virus’ envelope — the lipid membrane — “because when you destroy that, you destroy the virus.”
Most of us learned about the virus ‘envelope’ from the information about the importance of hand-washing, soap being a surfactant.
The plan will be for the anti-COVID-19 material to be available in different forms, as a coating and also in spray or dip coat format.
Health workers can spray it on personal protective equipment (PPE) to repel (and destroy) viral droplets from masks or gowns; the coating can be used on door handles and high touch surfaces and floors.
“Once the economy is reopened and people go back to work, you’ll need this kind of coating,” said Mitra. “Clearing surfaces all the time is labour-intensive, but the coating lasts a long time.”
Do they have much competition for this product from other scientists?
“There are others working on similar products, and that’s good. There are eight billion people on this planet and we can’t meet the entire demand.”
As regards COVID-19, Mitra said: “The global effort is critical. We learn from each other, and that includes on a vaccine. We are all working to push as much knowledge as possible into the public domain.”
Mitra reminds us that The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology — which is Canada’s largest nanotechnology institute — is committed to UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“And one of the stated goals of the United Nations is good health for everyone,” he said. “This is our small effort in that direction.”
Researchers at the University of Waterloo are developing a DNA-based vaccine that can be delivered through a nasal spray.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo are developing a DNA-based vaccine that can be delivered through a nasal spray.
The vaccine will work by using bacteriophage, a process that will allow the vaccine to replicate within bacteria already in the body and is being designed to target tissues in the nasal cavity and lower respiratory tract.
“When complete, our DNA-based vaccine will be administered non-invasively as a nasal spray that delivers nanomedicine engineered to immunize and decrease COVID-19 infections,” explains Roderick Slavcev, a professor in the School of Pharmacy who specializes in designing vaccines, pharmaceuticals and gene-therapy treatments. “This research combines the expertise of many and leverages existing technology developed by my team, which we’re reconfiguring for a COVID-19 application.”
When completed, the researchers aim to have the DNA-based vaccine enter cells in targeted tissues and cause them to produce a virus-like particle (VLP) that will stimulate an immune response in people.
The VLP will look similar to the structure of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19), but is harmless. This similarity will activate the body’s natural immune response to protect against viral infections comparable to the VLP, including SARS-CoV-2. It will also bind to receptors that SARS-CoV-2 would bind to, limiting the possible sites for transmission. By causing these changes in the body, the vaccine will build immunity against COVID-19 and decrease the severity of infections in progress – serving as both a therapeutic and a vaccine.
Every detail of the vaccine, from ensuring the bacteriophage target specific cells in the respiratory tract to creating a minimal VLP to impersonate SARS-CoV-2, is specifically engineered by the researchers and requires testing.
To achieve the design of such a complex project, Slavcev is teaming up with Emmanuel Ho, another professor at the School of Pharmacy, and Marc Aucoin, professor of chemical engineering. Ho’s team is designing the nanomedication that will be delivered by the nasal spray, which is currently being tested. Aucoin’s lab is constructing and purifying the VLP and boosting immunity following the initial administration of the therapeutic vaccine.
“It is the collaborative effort of our talented teams that makes this multidisciplinary project so feasible and necessarily efficient as a potential universal vaccine solution against SARS-CoV infections,” says Slavcev. “To practice science with such urgency alongside such talented colleagues and their students is not only immensely educational, it is extremely rewarding.”
Slavcev’s team has completed design of the bacteriophage delivery system and is currently modifying this system to apply to COVID-19. Additional design of components and further testing will take place later this year. Components of the research are supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Note: This research has not yet been peer-reviewed and is being released as part of UWaterloo’s commitment to help inform Canada’s COVID-19 response.
A radar device that relies on entangled photons works at such low power that it can hide behind background noise, making it useful for biomedical and security (stealthy radar) applications.
One of the advantages of the quantum revolution is the ability to sense the world in a new way. The general idea is to use the special properties of quantum mechanics to make measurements or produce images that are otherwise impossible.
Much of this work is done with photons. But as far as the electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, the quantum revolution has been a little one-sided. Almost all the advances in quantum computing, cryptography, teleportation, and so on have involved visible or near-visible light.
Today that changes thanks to the work of Shabir Barzanjeh at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and a few colleagues. This team has used entangled microwaves to create the world’s first quantum radar. Their device, which can detect objects at a distance using only a few photons, raises the prospect of stealthy radar systems that emit little detectable electromagnetic radiation.
The device is simple in essence. The researchers create pairs of entangled microwave photons using a superconducting device called a Josephson parametric converter. They beam the first photon, called the signal photon, toward the object of interest and listen for the reflection.
In the meantime, they store the second photon, called the idler photon. When the reflection arrives, it interferes with this idler photon, creating a signature that reveals how far the signal photon has traveled. Voila—quantum radar!
This technique has some important advantages over conventional radar. Ordinary radar works in a similar way but fails at low power levels that involve small numbers of microwave photons. That’s because hot objects in the environment emit microwaves of their own.
In a room temperature environment, this amounts to a background of around 1,000 microwave photons at any instant, and these overwhelm the returning echo. This is why radar systems use powerful transmitters.
Entangled photons overcome this problem. The signal and idler photons are so similar that it is easy to filter out the effects of other photons. So it becomes straightforward to detect the signal photon when it returns.
Of course, entanglement is a fragile property of the quantum world, and the process of reflection destroys it. Nevertheless, the correlation between the signal and idler photons is still strong enough to distinguish them from background noise.
This allows Barzanjeh and co to detect a room temperature object in a room temperature environment with just a handful of photons, in a way that is impossible to do with ordinary photons. “We generate entangled fields using a Josephson parametric converter at millikelvin temperatures to illuminate a room-temperature object at a distance of 1 meter in a proof of principle radar setup,” they say.
The researchers go on to compare their quantum radar with conventional systems operating with similarly low numbers of photons and say it significantly outperforms them, albeit only over relatively short distances.
That’s interesting work revealing the significant potential of quantum radar and a first application of microwave-based entanglement. But it also shows the potential application of quantum illumination more generally.
A big advantage is the low levels of electromagnetic radiation required. “Our experiment shows the potential as a non-invasive scanning method for biomedical applications, e.g., for imaging of human tissues or non-destructive rotational spectroscopy of proteins,” say Barzanjeh and co.
Then there is the obvious application as a stealthy radar that is difficult for adversaries to detect over background noise. The researchers say it could be useful for short-range low-power radar for security applications in closed and populated environments.
Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) members, in partnership with the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), is developing the next generation of radar, quantum radar. Professor Zbig Wasilewski, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is fabricating the materials for quantum radar.
The two other co-PIs on this project are Professor Jonathan Baugh and Professor Mike Reimer. Professor Baugh is a member of both WIN and IQC, while Professor Reimer main focus is on quantum photonics as a member of IQC.
In April 2018, the Government of Canada announced they would invest $2.7 million in the joint quantum radar project. The state-ofthe-art facilities in Lazaridis Centre make this project possible. Professor Wasilewski’s Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) lab will grow the quantum material to adequate perfection to meet the challenge. The IQC houses the necessary quantum device processing and photonic labs. This ambitious project is not possible at many research institutions in the world. The MBE lab allows Wasilewski to create quantum structures with atomic precision. These materials will in turn form the foundation of the quantum radar. “Many challenges lie ahead,” said Professor Wasilewski. “Building up quantum illumination sources to the scale needed for quantum radar calls for the very best in material growth, nanofabrication and quantum engineering. We have an excellent interdisciplinary team with the diverse expertise needed to tackle all these challenges. It would be hard to assemble a better one in Canada or internationally.”
“We have an excellent interdisciplinary team with the diverse expertise needed to tackle all these challenges. It would be hard to assemble a better one in Canada or internationally.”
Professor Jonathan Baugh said, “By developing a fast, on-demand source of quantum light, we hope to bring techniques like quantum illumination from the lab to the real world. This project would not be possible without the right team, and we are fortunate to have a uniquely strong multidisciplinary collaboration based entirely at Waterloo, one which strengthens ties between WIN and IQC.”
The proposed quantum radar will help operators cut through heavy background noise and isolate objects in Canada’s far north. Standard radar systems are unable to detect stealth aircraft in the high-arctic due to the aurora borealis. This natural phenomenon sends electromagnetic energy at varying wavelengths down to Earth.
It is hypothesized that quantum radar works by separating two entangled light particles. You keep one on earth and send the entangled partner into the sky. If the light particle bounces off of your source and back to your detector you have located a stealth aircraft.
Quantum radar’s viability outside of a lab still needs to be determined. The goal of this project is to demonstrate its capability in the field.
The $2.7 million is being invested under the Department of National Defence’s All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) Science and Technology program.
How a new quantum sensor could improve cancer treatment
The development of medical imaging and monitoring methods has profoundly impacted the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. These non-invasive techniques allow health care practitioners to look for cancer in the body and determine if treatment is working.
But current techniques have limitations; namely, tumours need to be a specific size to be visible. Being able to detect cancer cells, even before there are enough to form a tumour, is a challenge that researchers around the world are looking to solve.
The solution may lie in nanotechnology
Researchers at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) have developed a quantum sensor that is promising to outperform existing technologies in monitoring the success of cancer treatments.
Artist’s rendering of the interaction of incident single photon pulses and a tapered semiconductor nanowire array photodetector.
“A sensor needs to be very efficient at detecting light,” explains principal investigator Michael Reimer, an IQC faculty member and professor in the Faculty of Engineering. “What’s unique about our sensor is that the light can be absorbed all the way, from UV to infrared. No commercially available device exists that can do that now.”
Current sensors reflect some of the light, and depending on the material, this reflection can add up to 30 percent of the light not being absorbed.
This next-generation quantum sensor designed in Reimer’s lab is very efficient and can detect light at the fundamental limit — a single photon — and refresh for the next one within nanoseconds. Researchers created an array of tapered nanowires that turn incoming photons into electric current that can be amplified and detected.
When applied to dose monitoring in cancer treatment, this enhanced ability to detect every photon means that a health practitioner could monitor the dose being given with incredible precision — ensuring enough is administered to kill the cancer cells, but not too much that it also kills healthy cells.
Moving quantum technology beyond the lab
Reimer published his findings in Nature Nanotechnology in March and is now working on a prototype to begin testing outside of his lab. Reimer’s goal is to commercialize the sensor in the next three to five years.
“I enjoy the fundamental research, but I’m also interested in bringing my research out of the lab and into the real world and making an impact to society,” says Reimer.
He is no stranger to bringing quantum technology to the marketplace. While completing his post doctorate at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, Reimer was an integral part of the startup, Single Quantum, developing highly efficient single-photon detectors based on superconducting nanowires.
Reimer’s latest sensor has a wide range of applications beyond dose monitoring for cancer treatments. The technology also has the ability to significantly improve high-speed imaging from space and long-range, high-resolution 3D images.
“A broad range of industries and research fields will benefit from a quantum sensor with these capabilities,” said Reimer. “It impacts quantum communication to quantum lidar to biological applications. Anywhere you have photon-starved situations, you would want an efficient sensor.”
He is exploring all industries and opportunities to put this technology to use.
Breakthroughs come in unexpected places
After earning his undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Waterloo, Reimer moved to Germany to play professional hockey. While taking graduate courses at the Technical University of Munich, he met a professor of nanotechnology who sparked his interest in the field.
“I played hockey and science was my hobby,” says Reimer. “Science is still my hobby, and it’s amazing that it is now my job.” Reimer went on to complete his PhD at the University of Ottawa/National Research Council of Canada, and turned his attention to quantum light sources. Reimer is an internationally renowned expert in quantum light sources and sensors. The idea for the quantum sensor came from his initial research in quantum light sources.
“To get the light out from the quantum light source, we had to come up with a way that you don’t have reflections, so we made this tapered shape. We realized that if we can get the light out that way we could also do the reverse — that’s where the idea for the sensor came from.”
Reimer will be at the Waterloo Innovation Summit on October 1, to present his latest breakthrough and its potential impact on the health care sector. And while he works to bring the sensor to market, Reimer’s lab continues to push the boundaries of quantum photonics.
From discovering the path to perfect photon entanglement to developing novel solid-state quantum devices, Reimer’s research is advancing technologies that could disrupt a multitude of industries and research fields.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a way to better harness the volume of energy collected by solar panels.
In a new study, the researchers developed an algorithm that increases the efficiency of the solar photovoltaic (PV) system and reduces the volume of power currently being wasted due to a lack of effective controls.
“We’ve developed an algorithm to further boost the power extracted from an existing solar panel,” said Milad Farsi, a PhD candidate in Waterloo’s Department of Applied Mathematics. “Hardware in every solar panel has some nominal efficiency, but there should be some appropriate controller that can get maximum power out of solar panels.
“We do not change the hardware or require additional circuits in the solar PV system. What we developed is a better approach to controlling the hardware that already exists.”
The new algorithm enables controllers to better deal with fluctuations around the maximum power point of a solar PV system, which have historically led to the wasting of potential energy collected by panels.
“Based on the simulations, for a small home-use solar array including 12 modules of 335W, up to 138.9 kWh/year can be saved,” said Farsi, who undertook the study with his supervisor, Professor Jun Liu of Waterloo’s Department of Applied Mathematics. “The savings may not seem significant for a small home-use solar system but could make a substantial difference in larger-scale ones, such as a solar farm or in an area including hundreds of thousands of local solar panels connected to the power grid.
“Taking Canada’s largest PV plant, for example, the Sarnia Photovoltaic Power Plant, if this technique is used, the savings could amount to 960,000 kWh/year, which is enough to power hundreds of households. If the saved energy were to be generated by a coal-fired plant, it would require emission of 312 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.”
Milad further pointed out that the savings could be even more substantial under a fast-changing ambient environment, such as Canadian weather conditions, or when the power loss in the converters due to the undesired chattering effects seen in other conventional control methods is taken into account.
The study, Nonlinear Optimal Feedback Control and Stability Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Systems, authored by Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics researchers Farsi and Liu, was recently published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.
Radar that can spot stealth aircraft and other quantum innovations could give their militaries a strategic edge
In the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, American military planners began to worry about the threat to US warplanes posed by new, radar-guided missile defenses in the USSR and other nations. In response, engineers at places like US defense giant Lockheed Martin’s famous “Skunk Works” stepped up work on stealth technology that could shield aircraft from the prying eyes of enemy radar.
The innovations that resulted include unusual shapes that deflect radar waves—like the US B-2 bomber’s “flying wing” design (above)—as well as carbon-based materials and novel paints. Stealth technology isn’t yet a Harry Potter–like invisibility cloak: even today’s most advanced warplanes still reflect some radar waves. But these signals are so small and faint they get lost in background noise, allowing the aircraft to pass unnoticed.
China and Russia have since gotten stealth aircraft of their own, but America’s are still better. They have given the US the advantage in launching surprise attacks in campaigns like the war in Iraq that began in 2003.
This advantage is now under threat. In November 2018, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China’s biggest defense electronics company, unveiled a prototype radar that it claims can detect stealth aircraft in flight. The radar uses some of the exotic phenomena of quantum physics to help reveal planes’ locations.
It’s just one of several quantum-inspired technologies that could change the face of warfare. As well as unstealthing aircraft, they could bolster the security of battlefield communications and affect the ability of submarines to navigate the oceans undetected. The pursuit of these technologies is triggering a new arms race between the US and China, which sees the emerging quantum era as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain the edge over its rival in military tech.
Stealth spotter
How quickly quantum advances will influence military power will depend on the work of researchers like Jonathan Baugh. A professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Baugh is working on a device that’s part of a bigger project to develop quantum radar. Its intended users: stations in the Arctic run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, a joint US-Canadian organization.
Baugh’s machine generates pairs of photons that are “entangled”—a phenomenon that means the particles of light share a single quantum state. A change in one photon immediately influences the state of the other, even if they are separated by vast distances.
Quantum radar operates by taking one photon from every pair generated and firing it out in a microwave beam. The other photon from each pair is held back inside the radar system.
Equipment from a prototype quantum radar system made by China Electronics Technology Group Corporation IMAGINECHINA VIA AP IMAGES
Only a few of the photons sent out will be reflected back if they hit a stealth aircraft. A conventional radar wouldn’t be able to distinguish these returning photons from the mass of other incoming ones created by natural phenomena—or by radar-jamming devices. But a quantum radar can check for evidence that incoming photons are entangled with the ones held back. Any that are must have originated at the radar station. This enables it to detect even the faintest of return signals in a mass of background noise.
Baugh cautions that there are still big engineering challenges. These include developing highly reliable streams of entangled photons and building extremely sensitive detectors. It’s hard to know if CETC, which already claimed in 2016 that its radar could detect objects up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, has solved these challenges; it’s keeping the technical details of its prototype a secret.
Seth Lloyd, an MIT professor who developed the theory underpinning quantum radar, says that in the absence of hard evidence, he’s skeptical of the Chinese company’s claims. But, he adds, the potential of quantum radar isn’t in doubt. When a fully functioning device is finally deployed, it will mark the beginning of the end of the stealth era.
China’s ambitions
CETC’s work is part of a long-term effort by China to turn itself into a world leader in quantum technology. The country is providing generous funding for new quantum research centers at universities and building a national research center for quantum science that’s slated to open in 2020. It’s (China) already leaped ahead of the US in registering patents in quantum communications and cryptography.
A study of China’s quantum strategy published in September 2018 by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a US think tank, noted that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is recruiting quantum specialists, and that big defense companies like China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) are setting up joint quantum labs at universities. Working out exactly which projects have a military element to them is hard, though. “There’s a degree of opacity and ambiguity here, and some of that may be deliberate,” says Elsa Kania, a coauthor of the CNAS study.
China’s efforts are ramping up just as fears are growing that the US military is losing its competitive edge. A commission tasked by Congress to review the Trump administration’s defense strategy issued a report in November 2018 warning that the US margin of superiority “is profoundly diminished in key areas” and called for more investment in new battlefield technologies.
One of those technologies is likely to be quantum communication networks. Chinese researchers have already built a satellite that can send quantum-encrypted messages between distant locations, as well as a terrestrial network that stretches between Beijing and Shanghai. Both projects were developed by scientific researchers, but the know-how and infrastructure could easily be adapted for military use.
The networks rely on an approach known as quantum key distribution (QKD). Messages are encoded in the form of classical bits, and the cryptographic keys needed to decode them are sent as quantum bits, or qubits. These qubits are typically photons that can travel easily across fiber-optic networks or through the atmosphere. If an enemy tries to intercept and read the qubits, this immediately destroys their delicate quantum state, wiping out the information they carry and leaving a telltale sign of an intrusion.
QKD technology isn’t totally secure yet. Long ground networks require way stations similar to the repeaters that boost signals along an ordinary data cable. At these stations, the keys are decoded into classical form before being re-encoded in a quantum form and sent to the next station. While the keys are in classical form, an enemy could hack in and copy them undetected.
To overcome this issue, a team of researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland, is working on an approach called quantum teleportation. This involves using entanglement to transfer data between a qubit held by a sender and another held by a receiver, using what amounts to a kind of virtual, one-time-only quantum data cable. (There’s a more detailed description here.)
Michael Brodsky, one of the researchers, says he and his colleagues have been working on a number of technical challenges, including finding ways to ensure that the qubits’ delicate quantum state isn’t disrupted during transmission through fiber-optic networks. The technology is still confined to a lab, but the team says it’s now robust enough to be tested outside. “The racks can be put on trucks, and the trucks can be moved to the field,” explains Brodsky.
It may not be long before China is testing its own quantum teleportation system. Researchers are already building the fiber-optic network for one that will stretch from the city of Zhuhai, near Macau, to some islands in Hong Kong.
Quantum compass
Researchers are also exploring using quantum approaches to deliver more accurate and foolproof navigation tools to the military. US aircraft and naval vessels already rely on precise atomic clocks to help keep track of where they are. But they also count on signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS), a network of satellites orbiting Earth. This poses a risk because an enemy could falsify, or “spoof,” GPS signals—or jam them altogether.
Lockheed Martin thinks American sailors could use a quantum compass based on microscopic synthetic diamonds with atomic flaws known as nitrogen-vacancy centers, or NV centers. These quantum defects in the diamond lattice can be harnessed to form an extremely accurate magnetometer. Shining a laser on diamonds with NV centers makes them emit light at an intensity that varies according to the surrounding magnetic field.
Ned Allen, Lockheed’s chief scientist, says the magnetometer is great at detecting magnetic anomalies—distinctive variations in Earth’s magnetic field caused by magnetic deposits or rock formations. There are already detailed maps of these anomalies made by satellite and terrestrial surveys. By comparing anomalies detected using the magnetometer against these maps, navigators can determine where they are. Because the magnetometer also indicates the orientation of magnetic fields, ships and submarines can use them to work out which direction they are heading.
China’s military is clearly worried about threats to its own version of GPS, known as BeiDou. Research into quantum navigation and sensing technology is under way at various institutes across the country, according to the CNAS report.
As well as being used for navigation, magnetometers can also detect and track the movement of large metallic objects, like submarines, by fluctuations they cause in local magnetic fields. Because they are very sensitive, the magnetometers are easily disrupted by background noise, so for now they are used for detection only at very short distances. But last year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences let slip that some Chinese researchers had found a way to compensate for this using quantum technology. That might mean the devices could be used in the future to spot submarines at much longer ranges.
A tight race
It’s still early days for militaries’ use of quantum technologies. There’s no guarantee they will work well at scale, or in conflict situations where absolute reliability is essential. But if they do succeed, quantum encryption and quantum radar could make a particularly big impact. Code-breaking and radar helped change the course of World War II. Quantum communications could make stealing secret messages much harder, or impossible. Quantum radar would render stealth planes as visible as ordinary ones. Both things would be game-changing.
It’s also too early to tell whether it will be China or the US that comes out on top in the quantum arms race—or whether it will lead to a Cold War–style stalemate. But the money China is pouring into quantum research is a sign of how determined it is to take the lead.
China has also managed to cultivate close working relationships between government research institutes, universities, and companies like CSIC and CETC. The US, by comparison, has only just passed legislation to create a national plan for coordinating public and private efforts. The delay in adopting such an approach has led to a lot of siloed projects and could slow the development of useful military applications. “We’re trying to get the research community to take more of a systems approach,” says Brodsky, the US army quantum expert.
Still, the US military does have some distinct advantages over the PLA. The Department of Defense has been investing in quantum research for a very long time, as have US spy agencies. The knowledge generated helps explains why US companies lead in areas like the development of powerful quantum computers, which harness entangled qubits to generate immense amounts of processing power.
The American military can also tap into work being done by its allies and by a vibrant academic research community at home. Baugh’s radar research, for instance, is funded by the Canadian government, and the US is planning a joint research initiative with its closest military partners—Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand—in areas like quantum navigation.
All this has given the US has a head start in the quantum arms race. But China’s impressive effort to turbocharge quantum research means the gap between them is closing fast.
Novel functionalized nanomaterials for CO2 capture. Credit: Copyright Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Polshettiwar et al. Chemical Science
Scientists at the University of Waterloo have created a powder that can capture CO2 from factories and power plants.
The powder, created in the lab of Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo, can filter and remove CO2 at facilities powered by fossil fuels before it is released into the atmosphere and is twice as efficient as conventional methods.
Chen said the new process to manipulate the size and concentration of pores could also be used to produce optimized carbon powders for applications including water filtration and energy storage, the other main strand of research in his lab.
“This will be more and more important in the future,” said Chen, “We have to find ways to deal with all the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels.”
CO2 molecules stick to the surface of carbon when they come in contact with it, a process known as adsorption. Since it is abundant, inexpensive and environmentally friendly, that makes carbon an excellent material for CO2 capture. The researchers, who collaborated with colleagues at several universities in China, set out to improve adsorption performance by manipulating the size and concentration of pores in carbon materials.
The technique they developed uses heat and salt to extract a black carbon powder from plant matter. Carbon spheres that make up the powder have many, many pores and the vast majority of them are less than one-millionth of a metre in diameter.
“The porosity of this material is extremely high,” said Chen, who holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in advanced materials for clean energy. “And because of their size, these pores can capture CO2 very efficiently. The performance is almost doubled.”
Once saturated with carbon dioxide at large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants, the powder would be transported to storage sites and buried in underground geological formations to prevent CO2 release into the atmosphere.
A paper on the CO2 capture work, In-situ ion-activated carbon nanospheres with tunable ultra-microporosity for superior CO2 capture, appears in the journal Carbon.
Professor Chen can be reached at zhwchen@uwaterloo.ca or 519-888-4567 ext. 38664.
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Novel functionalized nanomaterials for CO2 capture. Credit: Copyright Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Polshettiwar et al. Chemical Science
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