Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Imagine hands covered in wide-meshed woolen mittens in winter compared to those protected by modern materials that keep the skin dry and warm and additionally charge your phone. This gives an analogy to how future technologies can profit from new so-called quantum materials that are currently at the forefront of research. These materials are capable of transmitting quantum effects into our macroscopic world, be it for new metrologies or devices used in photonics, electronics or telecommunication industries. To exploit such features however requires in-depth characterization which is greatly limited with current metrologies and calls for new developments. The proposed project will allow researchers from INRS-EMT and its industrial partner Quantum Valley Investments (QVI) - a think-tank developing quantum materials, to create such new metrologies. This requires the combination of conventional laboratory based ultrafast temporal resolution with short wavelength particles (photons and electrons). Fully accessing the interior of such quantum materials demands a combination of well controlled XUV/soft X-ray photons and ultrafast electron bunches. With the X-ray pulses the material's electrons will be characterized, while the electron bunches provide complementary lattice information. At the ALLS facility located in Varennes (Qc), both have been produced in the past and will be shaped within the current research proposal to meet the high requirements necessary for such new material characterization. An important component of this project will be the transfer of a metrology - a high flux harmonic source - to QVI's R&D facility in Waterloo (On). Once the metrologies are set, they will be applied and validated for studying dynamics in materials of high relevance to QVI. The proposed metrologies/instrumentations and the training of highly-qualified personnel will contribute to keep Canada at the forefront of the rapidly moving "quantum revolution", thereby enhancing its leading position across critical sectors that vitally require powerful quantum computation and metrology platforms, such as advanced environmental sensing, high-precision chemical analysis, and increased security protocols.