In a small crystal thinner than a strand of spider silk, scientists may have found the building block for computers of the future. Researchers at the University of Warsaw, working with teams from Singapore and the Netherlands, discovered that a material called zinc phosphorus trisulfide — ZnPS₃ for short — can emit exactly one particle of light at a time on command. That ability is a big deal for building powerful new technologies like ultra-secure quantum computers.
Traditional computers process information using bits, which are either 0 or 1. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can be 0, 1, or both at the same time — a strange property that lets them solve certain problems much faster than regular computers. But getting qubits to work reliably has been tricky. One promising approach uses single-photon emitters, which shoot out individual particles of light that can carry quantum information. The challenge has been finding materials that produce these single photons dependably and can be shaped into tiny chips.
That's where ZnPS₃ comes in. The research team, led by first author Natalia Zawadzka, found that when they shined a laser on tiny flakes of this crystal — each just tens of nanometers thick, about a thousand times thinner than a human hair — it produced streams of individual photons with a property called high polarization. Polarization means the light vibrates in a specific, stable direction, which can be used to encode information. Think of it like sending a message using only upward or downward waves instead of random ones — it's cleaner and harder to intercept.
The scientists traced the photon emission to tiny flaws in the crystal's structure: missing phosphorus atoms. These microscopic defects act like tiny lightbulbs, each one capable of releasing a single photon when excited by the laser. Because the crystal is a two-dimensional material — meaning it's arranged in ultra-thin layers — it can be peeled apart and placed onto other surfaces much more easily than traditional materials. This flexibility opens the door to integrating quantum components directly onto silicon chips, the same kind used in everyday electronics.
The study, published in the journal ACS Nano, involved researchers from three countries combining their expertise. The Warsaw team worked alongside scientists from the National University of Singapore and Radboud University in the Netherlands.
The findings suggest ZnPS₃ could become a key material for scalable quantum architecture — in other words, a way to build quantum circuits that can be produced in large quantities, not just one lab at a time. While commercial quantum chips are still years away, this discovery brings scientists one step closer to a world where quantum computers could be manufactured as easily as the chips in your phone.