Common salt helps create new material for high-speed quantum tech

Researchers have achieved a major breakthrough by creating stable niobium disulfide metallic nanotubes using common table salt as a key ingredient. This innovation, led by an international team including Penn State’s Materials Research Institute, overcomes a longstanding challenge in nanomaterial science: producing metallic nanotubes with predictable and stable properties. Unlike previously available carbon or boron nitride nanotubes, which act as semiconductors or insulators, these metallic nanotubes exhibit potential for superconductivity and magnetism, opening new avenues for faster electronics, efficient superconducting wires, and quantum computing applications. The team formed the nanotubes by rolling niobium disulfide—a metal known for superconductivity in bulk form—around carbon and boron nitride nanotube templates. The addition of a small amount of table salt at a critical stage induced the metal to wrap into stable, double-layered tubular structures rather than spreading out as flat sheets. This nested double-layer configuration, supported by computational modeling, allows electrons to move