Researchers show a new way to induce useful defects using invisible material properties

Much of modern electronic and computing technology is based on one idea: Add chemical impurities, or defects, to semiconductors to change their ability to conduct electricity. These altered materials are then combined in different ways to produce the devices that form the basis for digital computing, transistors, and diodes. Indeed, some quantum information technologies are based on a similar principle: adding defects and specific atoms within materials can produce qubits, the fundamental information storage units of quantum computing.