Katie Sautter is an architect of exquisite, invisible structures. Built one atomic layer at a time, her team’s atomically engineered samples are the starting points for new materials that could one day enable a quantum network.
A postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Sautter researches quantum materials as part of Q-NEXT, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center established in 2020. The materials that emerge from her team’s research will be used in quantum communication devices.
“Quantum devices have an enormous range of potential applications in cybersecurity, computing, data communications and lasers — quantum engineering can take all of these in a direction that can’t be taken using traditional methods,” said Sautter, who works with Q-NEXT in Argonne’s Nanoscience and Technology division.