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Charles (Chuck) Black, named director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) in June 2025, leads a 28-institution effort using materials science to improve superconducting qubits and make quantum hardware manufacturable at scale. C2QA researchers have built tantalum-based transmon qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond, described as the longest ever reported.
Charles (Chuck) Black, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) at Brookhaven National Laboratory since June 2025, is leading a 28-institution research effort to make quantum computers scalable by attacking the problem through materials science — including the use of the superconductor tantalum to build longer-lived qubits, according to a report published by The Quantum Insider on September 30, 2026. The center’s researchers have produced superconducting transmon qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond, which the report describes as the longest ever reported.
C2QA is a National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Brookhaven National Laboratory and spanning 28 institutions from national laboratories, academia, and industry. According to the report, the center’s mission is to deliver advances in materials science and modular system architectures that enable scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems. Black also serves as deputy associate laboratory director for Brookhaven’s Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate.
A central strand of C2QA’s work addresses a performance plateau in superconducting qubits. After more than a decade of building transmon qubits from aluminum and niobium, researchers found that qubit performance stalled, prompting questions about whether the constituent superconducting materials themselves were the limiting factor. C2QA researchers at Princeton University began building qubits with tantalum instead, because tantalum has fewer of the oxidation states suspected of degrading performance. Using characterization tools at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and the National Synchrotron Light Source II, the researchers gained an understanding of how oxidation of tantalum’s surface affects qubit performance.
Black’s path to the role combines fundamental physics with industrial manufacturing experience. He spent 1996 to 2006 as a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he and collaborators pioneered polymer self-assembly for semiconductor devices, and then nearly two decades at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which he directed from 2016 to 2025. That background, the report notes, informs C2QA’s pursuit of quantum devices built with silicon-compatible materials that align with existing manufacturing capabilities and could support future large-scale production.
Why Materials Choice Shapes Quantum Scaling
The report frames C2QA’s work as addressing two of the main obstacles between today’s quantum computers and practical, fault-tolerant machines: qubit performance and manufacturability. Longer qubit lifetimes mean quantum information can be preserved for more time before errors accumulate, which reduces the overhead required for quantum error correction — a prerequisite for large-scale quantum computing.
The manufacturing question may be equally consequential. Black’s comparison is to the early history of microelectronics, when the industry moved from germanium to silicon because silicon had better material properties. “I wonder if it’s possible that aluminum and niobium are the ‘germaniums’ of quantum computing,” Black said in the report. If quantum hardware can be built with materials compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing lines, the path to producing quantum processors at scale becomes shorter than if each device required bespoke fabrication.
For readers tracking national research investments, the story also illustrates how DOE-funded consortia pool expertise across dozens of institutions — in this case pairing the Yale physicists who invented the transmon qubit with materials scientists and synchrotron facilities.
From Transmon Invention to C2QA’s Launch
The superconducting transmon qubit, now a dominant architecture in quantum computing, was invented by physicists at Yale University while Black was building his materials science career at Brookhaven. C2QA launched in 2020 as one of DOE’s National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, and brought together the transmon inventors with materials scientists specifically to test whether superconducting materials were capping qubit performance.
Black’s own career, as recounted in the report, spans that history. A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, he studied superconducting materials as vehicles for fundamental physics questions and, he said, never expected to work with them again. “I feel like I’ve come full circle,” Black said of returning to superconductors through quantum computing. He joined Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials in 2006 as one of its first group leaders, working on nanoscale self-assembly for energy applications, before directing CFN from 2016 to 2025.
“I feel like I’ve come full circle.”
— Charles Black, director of C2QA
Open Questions in the Tantalum Approach
Several points remain unresolved. The claim that C2QA’s tantalum transmons are the world’s best-performing superconducting qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond comes from the center’s own account in the report, and qubit lifetime records in the field move quickly. It is also not yet clear whether tantalum can be integrated into manufacturing processes at scale, or whether silicon-compatible materials will meet the performance requirements of fault-tolerant architectures.
The broader question — whether better materials alone can deliver practical quantum computing — remains open. Black himself notes in the report that improving qubit performance “alone will not enable scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers,” and that manufacturing quantum hardware at scale is a separate, significant challenge. No timeline for a scalable, fault-tolerant system is given in the source material. The report is also a profile tied to a press release rather than a peer-reviewed publication of new results.
C2QA’s Path Under Black’s Direction
According to the report, C2QA under Black will continue work along two tracks: improving superconducting qubit performance through materials science, and developing quantum devices built with silicon-compatible materials that match existing manufacturing capabilities. The center’s stated goal remains delivering the materials and modular system architecture advances needed for scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems across its 28 partner institutions.
Readers can expect further results from the Princeton-led tantalum qubit effort and from characterization work at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and National Synchrotron Light Source II, though no specific upcoming milestones or publication dates were announced in the source material.
Key Questions
What is C2QA?
The Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage is a National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. It spans 28 institutions from national labs, academia, and industry, and focuses on materials science and modular system architectures for scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Who is Charles Black?
Charles (Chuck) Black is a materials scientist who was named C2QA director in June 2025. He previously directed Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (2016–2025) and spent a decade at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center pioneering polymer self-assembly for semiconductor devices.
Why is tantalum being used for qubits?
According to the report, C2QA researchers at Princeton University began building qubits with tantalum because it has fewer oxidation states suspected of degrading qubit performance than the conventionally used aluminum and niobium.
What qubit performance has C2QA achieved?
C2QA researchers have built superconducting transmon qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond, which the report describes as the longest ever reported. This claim originates from the center’s own account rather than an independent benchmark.
Does better qubit performance alone solve quantum scaling?
No. Black states in the report that improving qubit performance alone will not enable scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers; manufacturing quantum hardware at scale is a separate and significant challenge that C2QA is also addressing through silicon-compatible materials.
Source: rss
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