An amino acid from life itself just steadied a quantum material above room temperature

Quantum materials are prized for strange, useful behaviours — and notorious for losing them the moment things warm up. A UCLA team paired a layered crystal called tantalum disulfide with arginine, an amino acid your body uses every day, and the combination held its delicate quantum state stable above room temperature. The pairing began as a happy accident, and it hints at a new design trick: borrow molecules from biology to build energy-efficient memory and future quantum devices. The study is published in Nature Chemistry.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation