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Charles Black, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s C2QA, is leading a 28-institution effort to address materials and manufacturing challenges in quantum computing. The center reports transmon qubit lifetimes exceeding one millisecond in tantalum-based research, while scalable production and fault-tolerant systems remain longer-term goals.
Charles Black, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is leading research into superconducting materials and manufacturing approaches intended to support scalable quantum computers. Brookhaven says C2QA researchers have reported transmon qubit lifetimes exceeding one millisecond in work involving tantalum, while the center’s broader goal of building practical, fault-tolerant systems remains a research challenge.
C2QA brings together 28 institutions across national laboratories, academia and industry. The center investigates whether the materials used in superconducting qubits limit their performance, and how quantum devices might be designed to fit large-scale manufacturing. Brookhaven describes the work as combining materials science with modular system architectures.
Researchers from Princeton University built transmon qubits using tantalum in place of aluminum and niobium. The report says tantalum has fewer oxidation states suspected of harming qubit performance. C2QA teams used characterization facilities at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and National Synchrotron Light Source II to study how surface oxidation affects the devices. Brookhaven reports that the team achieved qubit lifetimes above one millisecond, which it describes as the longest reported at the time of its account.
Black’s remit also includes the manufacturing problem. The report connects his previous work on semiconductor devices and polymer self-assembly at IBM and Brookhaven to C2QA’s interest in quantum hardware made with silicon-compatible materials and methods aligned with existing production capabilities. Compatibility could aid manufacturing at larger scale, but the report does not say that such production has been achieved.
From Qubit Lifetimes to Scaled Hardware
Longer-lived qubits can give researchers more time to perform operations before quantum information is lost, addressing one obstacle to useful quantum computation. But a high-performing qubit alone does not make a practical computer: systems also need many components that work together, and fault-tolerant operation requires managing errors across those components.
C2QA’s focus on both materials and manufacturing reflects those linked hurdles. If researchers can improve device performance while using materials and processes compatible with established manufacturing, that could inform routes toward larger systems. The Brookhaven report describes that as a research direction; it does not establish that the approach is ready for industrial production or that it has delivered a fault-tolerant computer.
Black’s Path to C2QA
Black earned a doctorate in physics at Harvard and later spent a decade at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, from 1996 to 2006, working on semiconductor devices and manufacturing. He joined Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials in 2006, became its director in 2016 and led it through 2025. Brookhaven named him C2QA director in June 2025; he also serves as deputy associate laboratory director for the Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate.
C2QA launched in 2020. Its research draws on the superconducting transmon, a qubit design developed at Yale, and on subsequent efforts to improve the performance of devices made with materials including aluminum and niobium. The center’s investigations of tantalum build on that line of work by testing whether material properties and surface chemistry can help explain performance limits.
““I feel like I’ve come full circle.””
— Charles Black, C2QA director
What Tantalum Can Still Prove
The account does not provide the measurement conditions, device counts or comparison baseline behind the reported qubit lifetimes. It also does not give an independent assessment of the result. The cited milestone should be understood as Brookhaven’s description of the team’s research outcome.
It remains unclear whether tantalum-based devices can be manufactured reliably at scale, how they perform as parts of larger systems, and whether the materials approach will contribute to fault-tolerant computing. The report gives no timetable for those outcomes or for commercial deployment.
Testing Materials and Manufacturing
C2QA researchers are continuing to study how materials and surface oxidation affect qubit performance, while pursuing device designs compatible with established manufacturing capabilities. The next meaningful evidence would include further reported measurements, details about reproducibility and demonstrations that the devices can be integrated into larger systems.
Brookhaven’s report does not announce a specific milestone date. For now, the center’s work remains a multi-institution research effort aimed at addressing hardware constraints that stand between current quantum devices and scalable, fault-tolerant systems.
Key Questions
Who is Charles Black?
Charles Black is director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage and deputy associate laboratory director for its Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate. He previously led Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and worked at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
What is C2QA researching?
C2QA studies materials, qubit performance and system architectures, alongside ways to make quantum hardware compatible with larger-scale manufacturing. Brookhaven says the center spans 28 institutions.
What did the tantalum research report?
Brookhaven says C2QA researchers used tantalum in superconducting transmon qubits and reported lifetimes exceeding one millisecond. The report links the work to research on tantalum surface oxidation and qubit performance.
Does the result mean scalable quantum computers are ready?
No. The reported qubit lifetime is a research result, while scalable manufacturing and fault-tolerant quantum systems remain goals. The account does not report that a large-scale or fault-tolerant computer has been built.
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