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On Tuesday 27 March, TU Delft will launch the Delft Bioengineering Institute. Main speaker is Clive Brown, Chief Technology Officer at DNA sequencing specialist Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

Two groups of scientists from TU Delft in the field of quantum nanotechnology have, independently of one another, found a way to convert spin information to light. The groups are led by professors Kobus Kuipers and Lieven Vandersypen, who both work at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience. Their research has been published in Science. The discovery by Kuipers can lead to green ICT, for example energy-efficient data processing in data centres. The aim of Vandersypen's research is to allow large numbers of qubits on a chip to work together, bringing the quantum computer one step closer.

Spintronics in materials of just a few atoms thick is an emerging field in which the ‘spin’ of electrons is used to process data, rather than the charge. Unfortunately, the spin only lasts for a very short time, making it (as yet) difficult to exploit in electronics. Researchers from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at TU Delft, working with the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research’s AMOLF institute, have now found a way to convert the spin information into a predictable light signal at room temperature. The discovery brings the worlds of spintronics and nanophotonics closer together and might lead to the development of an energy-efficient way of processing data, in data centres, for example. The researchers have given an account of their results in Science.

In 2012, the world of physics was rocked by the first observation of the exotic Majorana quasiparticle, in Leo Kouwenhoven’s laboratory. These particles are a promising candidate for robust quantum bits in a topological quantum computer of the future. A major challenge that lies ahead is how to manufacture usable, error-free quantum chips. By using new manufacturing methods, researchers from QuTech, in collaboration with TU Eindhoven, have successfully observed Majoranas in significantly improved conditions. This rules out alternative explanations and also represents another step towards the topological quantum computer of the future. The researchers published their findings today in Nature Nanotechnology.