On Friday, 20 June, UT researcher Femke Witmans will defend her PhD research on nanowires: a promising material for quantum computers. At the same time, she shares her enthusiasm with anyone interested. Through blogs, the Nanolympics and accessible talks, among other things, she shows that quantum technology is for everyone.
How do you build a quantum computer? PhD candidate Femke Witmans is researching the smallest building blocks: nanowires of tin telluride. This research could pave the way for quantum computers. These nanowires conduct electricity in a special way that is not yet fully understood.
Mysterious Majorana particles
When you combine those small wires with a superconductor, Majorana particles may be formed. Majorana particles are exotic particles that can help to protect and stabilise quantum computers. Witmans succeeded in making these wires superconductive, an important step in actually finding those Majorana particles.
She hasn't observed these Majorana particles in her research yet. "No one has successfully demonstrated those particles; that would have been a huge breakthrough," says Witmans. Nevertheless, her research into the properties of nanowires is valuable to improve our understanding of the world around us. "I'm working on something so fundamental that you don't always know if it will ever get an application. But that was also once true for the transistor. Without that research, we wouldn't have phones now."
Her work also helps to better understand how this type of material behaves, and whether it is indeed suitable as a building block for the quantum computer of the future. That can also be useful for other materials of the same type.
Nanolympics and Faces of Science
In addition to her lab work, Witmans travels the country explaining quantum technology to anyone who wants to hear it. As one of the 'Faces of Science' she shares insights into her life as a researcher and her research in various blogs and videos. She has already lectured at various schools on science, quantum and nanotechnology, and she is working on an episode for the daily youth documentary show ‘Het Klokhuis’ about curiosity-driven research. "From teenagers and vocational students to seniors, science is for, with and by everyone," she says. "Especially with such an abstract subject as quantum, it is important to show what it can bring us."
For example, together with other PhD students from MESA+, she brought the Paris Olympics to the Nanolab in Twente. In the Nanolympics team, she printed hundreds of frames of sports fragments on a chip measuring five by five millimetres. By assembling them into a rapid sequence, stop-motion videos of athletes were created that are as small as the thickness of your hair.
In this way, Witmans helps different target groups to better understand the technology of the future. But perhaps more importantly, it shows that science should be open and accessible to everyone. By explaining quantum physics to anyone curious about it, she builds trust, understanding and inspiration at the same time.
Learn more
Femke Witmans did her research as a PhD candidate in the research groups Nano Electronics (NE) and Interfaces and Collerated Electron systems (ICE) of the Faculties of EEMCS and S&T and Institute for Nanotechnology MESA+. On Friday, 20 June 2025, she will defend her PhD thesis entitled 'Quantum transport in tin telluride nanowire devices'. Her supervisors are Prof. Alexander Brinkman and Prof. Floris Zwanenburg.
