Overview

• Researchers led by Séamus Davis at University College Cork invented an Andreev scanning tunneling microscope mode that uses a superconducting probe to exclude normal electrons and reveal Majorana fermions on material surfaces.
• Experiments published in Science definitively establish uranium ditelluride (UTe₂) as an intrinsic topological superconductor, marking the first conclusive confirmation of its kind.
• The new technique enables direct evaluation of candidate materials for topological quantum computing, streamlining the search beyond complex synthetic superconducting stacks.
• Single-material superconductors like UTe₂ could replace elaborate engineered circuits in devices such as Microsoft’s Majorana1 QPU, boosting qubit density and processor efficiency.
• This breakthrough advances the path toward scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers by simplifying material requirements for topological cores in quantum processors.