Research Overview

Quantum technology, which allows the manipulation and sensing of individual atoms and sub-atomic particles to exploit their properties, will enable super-sensitive chemical sensors and biosensors with improved selectivity and response time, and imaging devices with vastly improved resolution, range, and ability to see through obscurants or around corners. As such quantum devices become miniaturized and further functionalized, they have opportunities to significantly impact and disrupt key applications that benefit from chemical sensing, biosensing or imaging, such as environmental monitoring, healthcare diagnostics, security and defense, food quality monitoring, industrial safety and quality control, and potentially transportation. For example, quantum plasmonic sensors with considerably less noise have opportunities in areas such as blood protein analysis, chemical detection, and atmospheric sensing. Quantum sensors with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) diamonds have key potential in chemical analysis, NMR spectroscopy, and materials characterization. Quantum sensors, including NV-diamond sensors, also have the potential to detect Covid-19. Quantum imaging has significant opportunities in areas such as environmental monitoring (for example, methane detection), healthcare (for example, biomedical imaging), security/defense (for example, ghost imaging, which creates correlated photon pairs to imaging using light that has never physically interacted with the object to be imaged, for applications such as covert imaging for security).