(133a) Industrial Applications of Basic Science: From Photovoltaics to Quantum Computing

In this talk I will describe two somewhat disparate areas of industrial research in materials and photonics of importance to both IBM and the information technology industry at large. The first involves our work on earth-abundant thin film photovoltaics with applications to powering the “Internet of Things”. I will briefly describe the challenges of improving the efficiency and open circuit voltage of CZTS,Se -Cu₂ ZnSn(S_x Se_1-x)₄– and our demonstration of a monolithic, series connected array capable of generating sufficient voltage for powering autonomous IoT devices even in room light. In the second part of my talk I will pivot to a new effort involving transduction of Josephson Junction based qubits from microwave to the infrared to facilitate both remote “blind programming” of a quantum computer and scaling of the number of qubits to levels required for error corrected computation.