Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory is a multidisciplinary science and engineering research center dedicated to addressing critical national challenges in sustainable energy, a healthy environment, and a secure nation. Established in 1946 as the first national laboratory in the United States, it operates as a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by UChicago Argonne LLC, a subsidiary of the University of Chicago. Its main campus is located at 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Lemont, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.

The laboratory conducts extensive basic and applied research across diverse scientific domains, including physical sciences, life sciences, environmental sciences, energy sciences, photon sciences, data sciences, and computational sciences. It hosts several national user facilities, such as the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), and Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), which are utilized by scientists from academia, industry, and other research institutions worldwide. Key research areas encompass energy storage and renewable energy, fundamental physics, chemistry, materials science, environmental sustainability, supercomputing, nuclear energy, and national security.

Under the leadership of Director Paul K. Kearns since 2017, Argonne National Laboratory continues to drive scientific and technological advancements. Recent notable achievements include the development of a novel qubit platform exhibiting ultra-low noise levels, a significant step forward for quantum computing. The laboratory has also been involved in research on lower-cost sodium-ion batteries and launched an AI "adviser" in early 2026. In April 2026, it received an additional $45 million from the National Science Foundation for a water-focused initiative aimed at the Great Lakes region. With an annual operating budget of approximately $1.1 billion and a workforce of nearly 4,000 employees, Argonne remains the largest national laboratory in the Midwestern United States.

Latest updates

Argonne's Novel Qubit Platform Achieves Ultra-Low Noise, Challenging Chip-Based Dominance

Event summary

  • Argonne National Laboratory has developed a qubit platform based on trapping single electrons on frozen neon gas.
  • The new platform demonstrates noise levels 10-10,000 times lower than most traditional semiconducting qubits.
  • The fabrication process for the neon qubit is reportedly simpler and lower-cost than those used for semiconducting and superconducting qubits.
  • The research, a joint effort between Argonne and the University of Notre Dame, was published in Nature Electronics.

The big picture

The development of a low-noise qubit platform represents a significant challenge to the established dominance of semiconductor and superconducting qubit technologies in the quantum computing race. While quantum computing remains in its nascent stages, the need for improved qubit coherence and reduced error rates is a key bottleneck to achieving practical quantum advantage. Argonne's innovation, if scalable, could reshape the competitive landscape and potentially unlock new applications for quantum computation.

What we're watching

Scalability
The ability to scale the neon qubit platform beyond laboratory demonstrations will be critical to its commercial viability, as current quantum computing efforts are heavily invested in semiconductor and superconducting approaches.
Integration
How effectively the neon qubit platform can be integrated with existing quantum computing architectures and control systems will determine its adoption rate within the broader quantum ecosystem.
Commercialization
The pace at which Argonne and its partners can transition this technology from a research demonstration to a commercially viable product will depend on securing funding and navigating intellectual property considerations.
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