What happened
Phys.org reports on University of Osaka work showing cobalt atoms forming local honeycomb motifs inside Co-doped sodium antimonate thin films. The appeal is practical: many Kitaev-material candidates lean on rare, expensive metals such as ruthenium and iridium, while cobalt is cheaper, widely available, and already familiar to semiconductor manufacturing.
The result is still early science, not a chip roadmap. But the reported ferromagnetic-like behavior around 88 K and the CoO6 honeycomb motifs are exactly the kind of materials clue the field needs. Quantum progress is not only about qubit counts. It is also about whether exotic states can be built from materials the world can actually source and process.
The breakthrough to watch may be the one that makes quantum hardware less exotic without making the physics less interesting.
Source
Reported by Cobalt honeycombs open a new path to quantum computing via phys.org, published May 28, 2026.