Dutch PhD candidate brings quantum computer closer
Research into tin telluride nanowires should pave the way for quantum computers.
Published on June 21, 2025
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UTwente researcher Femke Witmans will obtain her PhD next week for her research into nanowires: a promising material for quantum computers. At the same time, she enjoys explaining her work to anyone who is interested. Through blogs, Nanolympics, and simple lectures, she shows that quantum technology is for everyone.
How do you build a quantum computer? PhD candidate Femke Witmans is investigating the smallest building blocks: tin telluride nanowires. Her research is expected to 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 these tiny wires with a superconductor, Majorana particles may be created. Majorana particles are exotic particles that can serve as a shield to make quantum computers more stable. Witmans succeeded in achieving superconductivity in these wires, an essential step toward actually finding Majorana particles.
She has not yet demonstrated the existence of Majorana particles in her research. “No one has successfully demonstrated these particles yet; that would have been a huge breakthrough,” says Witmans. Nevertheless, her research into the properties of nanowires is valuable for a better understanding of the world around us. “I'm working on something so fundamental that you don't always know if it will ever have an application. But that was also true of the transistor at one time. Without that research, we wouldn't have phones today.”
Her work also helps us 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. This could also be useful for other materials of the same type.
Nanolympics and Faces of Science
In addition to her lab work, Witmans travels around the country to explain quantum technology to anyone who wants to hear about it. As one of the ‘Faces of Science’, she talks about her life as a researcher and her research in various blogs and videos. She has given lectures on science, quantum and nanotechnology at various schools and is collaborating on an episode of Klokhuis about curiosity-driven research. “Young people, vocational students, and seniors: science is for, with, and by everyone,” she says. “With such an abstract subject as quantum, it is especially important to show what it can do for us.”
Together with other PhD students from MESA+, she brought the Paris Olympics to the Nanolab in Twente. As part of the Nanolympics team, she printed hundreds of frames of sports clips on a chip measuring five by five millimeters. By assembling them in quick succession, she created stop-motion films of athletes who are as small as the thickness of a human hair.
In this way, Witmans helps different target groups to better understand the technology of the future. But perhaps even more importantly, she shows that science does not have to be a closed world. By explaining quantum physics to anyone who is curious about it, she builds trust, understanding, and inspiration.