GOLDEN, Colo. — From the outside, it looks like a refrigerator. But inside, Maybell Quantum Industries’ “Big Fridge” is nothing like any kitchen refrigerator. Maybell built the dilution refrigerator on the campus of Colorado School of Mines, and showed it off this week before it ships out to a customer in Canada.
Maybell founder and CEO Corban Tillemann-Dick explained how cold it will get inside the “Big Fridge.”
“If you go to the middle of outer space as far away from anything else as you can get, you're going to be at about negative 269 Celsius, and this is about 300 times colder than that,” Tillemann-Dick said.
The process to create a place where temperatures can reach near absolute zero involves interactions between Helium-3 and Helium-4. Maybell’s fridge is just one step in a process to advance the field of quantum computing. Quantum computers require these extremely cold temperatures — where molecular motion essentially stops — in order to function. Tillemann-Dick said their goal is to help companies build better quantum computers to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the world.
“Quantum computers can do things that are literally impossible for classical computers, they'll unlock the potential to cure cancer, to end infectious disease, to turn back the clock on climate change, but in order to unlock that potential, we need to get better at building them,” Tillemann-Dick said.
Previous dilution refrigerators might have taken up a whole room, whereas Maybell’s is the size of a kitchen fridge. The company expects to ship dozens to customers by the end of the year.
Colorado is currently a world leader in quantum computing. Dozens of companies and institutions, including Maybell and Colorado School of Mines are part of the Elevate Quantum consortium, which has a goal of creating 10,000 new quantum jobs by 2030.
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