Volume 24 Issue 12, December 2025

Pascale Senellart-Mardon, CNRS research director at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Université Paris-Saclay and co-founder of photonic quantum computer start-up Quandela, talks to Nature Materials about photonic quantum technologies and the challenges and opportunities of juggling academia and industry.

A scalable and reconfigurable hybrid photonic platform integrates multiple wavelength-tunable quantum emitters with a low-loss lithium niobate circuit, achieving on-chip spectral control and quantum interference, a key step towards fully integrated quantum photonic networking and computation on-chip.

Noise is a key source of decoherence that hinders the scaling of quantum computers. Suppressing disorder in epitaxially strained quantum wells in germanium/silicon germanium heterostructures reduces the noise experienced by hole spin qubits.

Ion migration under an electric field in a preconditioning process leads to highly efficient and stable bromide perovskite single-crystal X-ray photon-counting detectors.

Borrowing from optical fibre design, ion implantation enables index-contrast guiding of spin waves, opening new opportunities in wave-based computing.

A computer algorithm discovers all valid combinations of zeolite pairs that form intergrowths and correctly predicts their experimental feasibility.

A plasmonic printing technology is developed to enable rapid, room-temperature, scalable fabrication of all-metal oxide thin-film transistors and circuits.

By harnessing the viscoplastic surface effect, researchers have created a stretchable hermetic seal that enables the reliable encapsulation of stretchable electronics.

Photonic platforms are a prominent host on which practical quantum information technology applications can be leveraged and scaled. The authors discuss the state-of-the-art capabilities and give an outlook on optical technologies towards the realization of quantum computation, communications and metrology.

Individual spectral strain tuning of waveguide-coupled quantum dot single-photon emitters into a thin-film lithium niobate photonic platform is demonstrated, allowing quantum interference of two spatially separated quantum dot single-photon emitters.

The authors measure electric and magnetic noise, an important source of decoherence for quantum devices, on hole spin qubit devices in quantum wells in Ge/SiGe heterostructures, revealing a reduced charge noise on devices fabricated on Ge wafers.

Alkene-terminated silicon carbide surfaces are proposed as a room-temperature divacancy spin qubit quantum sensor suitable for bioimaging and nanoscale nuclear spin sensing.

Silicon-ion-implanted yttrium iron garnet technology enables low-loss and dispersion-tunable magnonic waveguides with spin-wave decay lengths of >100 µm, which pave the way for large-scale, energy-efficient magnonic integrated circuits.

An electron ptychography and energy-loss spectroscopy study of La₂PrNi₂O₇, a material that exhibits high-temperature superconductivity, is conducted.

The authors present magnetotransport measurements of tetralayer WSe₂, which serves as a simulator for correlated Dirac fermion physics. They tune the interactions using the twist angle and electric field, resulting in a semimetal–Mott insulator transition.

Spherical polar topological structures are of interest as they could enable high-density memory applications; however, such texture formation requires superlattices with delicately balanced boundary conditions to form. Here it is found that these textures can form in free-standing CuInP₂S₆, and that mechanical force can generate high-density domains.

Solid-state electrolytes that operate at a temperature of 300 °C suffer from a H⁺ concentration–conductivity trade-off. Here heavy Sc doping of cubic perovskites is shown to bypass this trade-off, enabling a proton conductivity of 0.01 S cm⁻¹ that arises from rapid proton diffusion along ScO₆ octahedra.

Two-dimensional polyamide/lithiated Nafion interphase layers assembled into ultrathin sheets show high-rate, high-capacity Li plating/stripping as well as high energy and power densities, enabling the fabrication of high-performance anode-free Li metal batteries.

The contributions of vehicular and structural modes to proton transport are quantified in phosphoric acid electrolytes. The derived conductivity model guides electrolyte-conductivity design and identifies an optimum electrolyte concentration to achieve low-temperature performance in batteries.

Determining the feasibility of intergrowths between zeolites is investigated using high-throughput atomistic simulations and experimental verification. Interfacial energy is an effective descriptor for identifying the feasibility of zeolite intergrowths and a zincosilicate zeolite intergrowth with three and nine rings is realized by hydrothermal syntheses.

Seeded growth methods are used to prepare highly ordered, crystalline semiconducting poly(di-n-hexylfluorene) platelet micelles, which exhibit long-range anisotropic exciton diffusion, particularly along the π–π-stacking direction.

The understanding of defects in bromide-based perovskites remains elusive. Electric biasing and introducing bromide in the precursor solution during crystal growth is shown to significantly reduce defects in formamidinium lead bromide.

A universal, high-resolution printing technology for metal oxide thin-film transistors is still lacking. A plasmonic printing technology is reported to fabricate high-performance, solution-processed all-metal oxide thin-film electronics under room temperature and ambient conditions.

Viscoplastic surface effects in polymeric elastomers drive the development of sealing platforms with high hermeticity and large stretchability to safeguard stretchable electronics from degradation.

A magnetically steered flexible bioelectronic catheter enables minimally invasive surgeries in animal models with simultaneous metabolite sensing.