Magnesium protects tantalum, a promising material for making qubits

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-magnesium-tantalum-material-qubits.html

"magnesium coating limited tantalum oxide formation increasing quantum coherence for 3 reasons: keeps tantalum from oxidizing, improves its purity, raises its temperature operating as superconductor... long time protection, even after 1 month... magnesium coating pulled out impurities, elevating transition temperature, reducing number of remaining unpaired electrons, increasing superconductivity and tantalum's ability to hold qubits' quantum coherence longer... large-scale, high-performance quantum computing systems"

Related: New techniques for making qubits out of erbium
https://phys.org/news/2024-02-techniques-qubits-erbium.html