Although we live in a quantum world, there is very little we know about how things work at the quantum level. Zetian Mi, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his team are changing that. Their project, Scalable Quantum Engineering and Manufacturing (SQEM), has been selected for the Blue Sky Initiative to develop new ways to control and use quantum particles such as excitons, polaritons, and dropletons.

Today, we are still in the age of the electron, Mi says. Discoveries from the 1950s and ‘60s are reaching their limits. The scale of world problems, however, continues to grow. One of several problems that SQEM could help address is water purification with ultraviolet LEDs. The leading deep UV LEDs only have a few percent efficiency, or lower. Researchers believe they can increase this by a factor of 10 to 100. These improvements would meet a growing demand for UV LEDs, which are experiencing more than 30 percent annual market growth as 2.5 billion people around the globe don’t have access to clean drinking water.

Primary energy consumption, one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century, is another area of focus. Through quantum engineering, SQEM has transformed gallium nitride into one of the most efficient photocatalysts for solar hydrogen generation. Mi envisions harnessing the unique quantum properties of gallium nitride to demonstrate artificial photosynthesis that can convert atmospheric carbon dioxide and water into fuel with an efficiency that bests plants by 10 to 100-fold.

The Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Congress have all expressed interest and support in quantum engineering.