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Charles Black, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s C2QA, is leading research into superconducting materials and hardware design for quantum computing. The center reports transmon qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond and is studying how materials and manufacturing choices could support larger systems.
Charles Black, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA), is leading research into superconducting materials and device manufacturing aimed at improving quantum hardware. A profile published by The Quantum Insider on September 30 says the center is investigating materials such as tantalum and approaches compatible with scalable manufacturing, addressing two challenges for building larger, fault-tolerant quantum systems.
C2QA is a U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Brookhaven. The center brings together 28 institutions from national laboratories, academia and industry. Black, who was named director in June 2025, also serves as deputy associate laboratory director for Brookhaven’s Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate.
The report describes C2QA research into tantalum superconductors for transmon qubits, the basic information-processing units in one leading quantum-computing architecture. Researchers from Princeton University made qubits using tantalum rather than aluminum or niobium. The source says tantalum has fewer oxidation states suspected of harming performance, and that characterization work at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and National Synchrotron Light Source II helped researchers examine how surface oxidation affects qubits.
The center reports that its team achieved transmon qubits with lifetimes exceeding one millisecond, which the source describes as the longest ever reported. Black’s remit also includes the manufacturing challenge: the profile links his earlier work on semiconductor fabrication at IBM to C2QA’s interest in quantum devices made with materials compatible with silicon-based manufacturing. The source does not specify a production timeline or say that large-scale manufacturing has been demonstrated.
Materials and Manufacturing Limits
Quantum processors need reliable qubits, and researchers are investigating whether material defects and surface chemistry help limit how long those qubits retain information. The reported tantalum results show why materials research is part of the effort to improve performance. A longer qubit lifetime, by itself, does not establish that a machine can correct errors at scale or run useful applications.
Manufacturing is a separate constraint. Larger systems require many devices that can be produced and integrated consistently. C2QA’s focus on materials compatible with existing semiconductor capabilities points to one possible route for scaling production, though the report describes this as a research direction rather than an achieved manufacturing capability.
From Nanomaterials to Qubits
Black earned a doctorate at Harvard, where he studied superconductors in fundamental physics research. He joined Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials in 2006, became its director in 2016 and held that post through 2025. Before Brookhaven, he worked at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center from 1996 to 2006 on polymer self-assembly approaches for semiconductor devices.
C2QA launched in 2020, bringing physicists and materials scientists together to address quantum-computing challenges. Its work on tantalum followed years of development of transmon qubits based on aluminum and niobium. The report says researchers questioned whether those materials were limiting further performance improvements; the profile presents tantalum as a candidate for investigation, not as a settled replacement.
“I feel like I’ve come full circle.”
— Charles Black, C2QA director
Questions Beyond Qubit Lifetimes
The report does not provide independent validation details, a comparison dataset or the measurement conditions behind the stated one-millisecond-plus lifetimes. It also does not establish how the reported result translates into error-corrected computing performance. The long-term performance of tantalum devices, their manufacturability at scale and their compatibility with future system architectures remain open research questions.
No schedule, production target or specific next milestone is given for C2QA’s manufacturing work. The center’s membership and stated goals describe the scope of its collaboration, but do not by themselves establish that scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems have been built.
C2QA’s Next Research Steps
C2QA researchers are continuing to study how superconducting material properties and surface oxidation relate to qubit performance, using Brookhaven facilities and collaborators across its 28 institutions. The center also plans to pursue hardware designs that align with established semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, according to the profile. The source gives no dates for a next public result or for scaling production.
Readers can look for further reports on whether tantalum-based devices maintain their performance as systems grow and whether manufacturing-compatible designs can be produced consistently. Those results will help clarify how the materials work connects to the wider goal of fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Key Questions
Who is Charles Black?
Charles Black is director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage. He also serves as deputy associate laboratory director for Brookhaven’s Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate.
What is C2QA researching?
C2QA studies challenges in quantum computing, including superconducting materials, qubit performance, system architectures and ways to manufacture quantum hardware at scale.
What did the center report about tantalum qubits?
The report says C2QA researchers achieved superconducting transmon qubit lifetimes exceeding one millisecond. It attributes the work to a team including Princeton researchers and describes tantalum as a material under investigation.
Does the result mean scalable quantum computers are ready?
No. The reported qubit lifetime is a research result, while building fault-tolerant systems also requires many reliable qubits, error correction and hardware that can be manufactured and integrated consistently. The source does not say those broader goals have been achieved.
Source: rss
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