Rare-earth silicide superconducting interconnect, Josephson junction, and resonator device article

This device article is the highest-value commercialization angle within the rare-earth silicide superconductor candidates portfolio. The claim covers a cryogenic electronic article that incorporates a method-selected rare-earth 1:1:1 ternary silicide (RE-T-Si) layer or body configured as a superconducting interconnect, a Josephson or tunnel junction electrode, or a superconducting resonator element. Because the claim attaches to the device configuration and the validated selection method rather than to the composition itself, it occupies a legal lane that composition prior art on known silicides cannot block. The timing case is concrete. Quantum hardware and cryogenic computing programs are scaling interconnect and junction stacks now, under real procurement and qualification pressure. The established Nb-family materials — niobium, NbTi, NbN — dominate current practice, but no entity has claimed device-use rights over method-selected rare-earth silicide alternatives in these roles. That gap is the opportunity. A device-use claim that reads on any qualifying article incorporating a screened silicide into interconnect, junction, or resonator configurations gives a holder licensing leverage across the three most critical functional layers in a superconducting processor stack simultaneously.

Each candidate is validated by multiple independent machine-learning interatomic potentials. A material advances only when the engines agree on phonon (dynamic) stability — disagreement is surfaced, not hidden.

The material class is the rare-earth 1:1:1 ternary silicide family (RE-T-Si, where RE is a rare-earth element and T is a transition metal), crystallizing in structure types derived from ThCr2Si2, PbFCl-CeFeSi, and closely related layered intermetallics. Five members serve as concrete embodiments: CeCuSi, CeNiSi, CeRuSi, LaRuSi, and NdNiSi. These are layered compounds with a structural architecture compatible with thin-film growth routes — sputtering, molecular beam epitaxy, or pulsed laser deposition onto lattice-matched substrates for device-grade layers, and arc or induction melting for bulk bodies. The heavy-fermion character present in several Ce-bearing members is the physical motivation for investigating superconducting behavior in this family; the layered crystal symmetry also makes substrate epitaxy geometrically tractable in a way that isotropic intermetallics are not. The selection methodology underlying the device claim is the multi-potential consensus screening approach developed within this portfolio. A candidate member is advanced only after four independent machine-learning interatomic potentials — MACE, CHGNet, and two additional ML potentials — each assess its phonon (dynamic) stability, and a majority consensus is reached with no imaginary phonon modes. For the selected member in this device article, the four-engine consensus returns a stable across the engines verdict, meaning at least three of the four independent potentials agree the structure does not exhibit dynamic instability. This consensus requirement is the critical gate: a material that destabilizes under any single potential but not others fails screening, removing false positives. Following stability consensus, a freedom-to-operate whitespace prescreen was run scoped specifically to device-use configurations — interconnects, junction electrodes, and resonators — to confirm the application space before claim drafting. No first-party density functional perturbation theory (DFPT) phonon calculation has yet been performed; the stability evidence is entirely ML-potential consensus at this stage. Critical superconducting transition temperature (Tc) data is also screening-grade only — no measured device-layer Tc has been produced.

We estimate the addressable market at $1–5 billion across superconducting electronics, cryogenic computing, and quantum computing hardware — a range reflecting genuine uncertainty in how fast cryogenic compute scales, not false precision. The capturable fraction is a device-use royalty on articles incorporating a method-selected RE-1:1:1 silicide as a functional layer, which is a narrower but defensible slice of that total. Royalty logic most naturally structures as a per-device or per-wafer running royalty tied to qualifying articles shipped, with milestone payments at material qualification and process qualification steps. Because the device-use claim reads on any article that meets the configuration requirements regardless of the licensee's broader bill of materials, the revenue base scales directly with cryogenic hardware unit volume — a meaningful driver as both quantum-processor and classical cryogenic-compute programs push toward larger chip counts. The buyer profile is well-capitalized. Cryogenic-computing programs and quantum-hardware makers — the primary customer segment — operate under substantial government and venture funding and face hard deadlines around qubit count, interconnect yield, and coherence that make material qualification a genuine budget priority. These are not speculative customers; they are organizations actively qualifying superconducting layer stacks. For a licensor, that means the discussion is about integration risk and qualification cost, not whether the function is needed. Royalty rates can be anchored to the value the interconnect or junction layer contributes to device performance rather than the raw material cost of the silicide film, which should sustain attractive per-unit economics even at modest Tc values relative to niobium.

device-use whitespace for superconducting interconnect/junction lanes

device-use claim to a method-selected material; not a composition claim

The primary acquisition and licensing targets are cryogenic-computing programs and quantum-hardware makers — organizations actively building superconducting interconnect, junction, and resonator stacks at scale. These include vertically integrated quantum processor companies developing proprietary chip stacks, superconducting-electronics foundries qualifying alternative material systems for next-generation nodes, and defense-funded cryogenic computing programs with hard timelines. All of these entities have a direct commercial need for the device-use rights this claim provides: a documented, screened silicide alternative for interconnect and junction layers that they can qualify within existing cryogenic process flows. For a vertically integrated superconducting-electronics or quantum-processor company, acquisition of this asset alongside the upstream selection method grants control over both the material shortlist and its device application — a defensible position against competitors seeking to use the same rare-earth silicide candidates. License-versus-acquire turns primarily on exclusivity requirements: a strategic seeking to prevent competitors from qualifying the same silicide alternatives in their interconnect stacks would pursue acquisition or an exclusive field-of-use license, while a party wanting freedom to operate without exclusivity would take a non-exclusive per-device-line license. Either structure is supportable by the claim scope, and the five named concrete members give any licensee defined starting points for the qualification program.

The central risk is that no superconducting behavior in a fabricated device layer has been measured. Tc values are screening estimates only. If the selected members prove to have Tc values too low for practical cryogenic-electronics operating temperatures — or if thin-film integration on lattice-matched substrates proves intractable for junction-grade interfaces — the device-use claim retains its legal structure but loses its commercial utility. Layered intermetallic thin films present non-trivial deposition and interface engineering challenges that the current work has not addressed empirically; those challenges are real and unresolved. The roadmap to de-risk is clear and bounded. A measured resistivity-versus-temperature sweep on a sputtered or MBE-deposited film of one or two of the five named members is the critical first step — it either confirms a usable Tc and validates the claim's commercial premise, or it identifies which members to prioritize. First-party DFPT on the selected member would independently confirm the ML-consensus stability result. Both experiments are standard cryogenic thin-film measurements, not exotic techniques, and can be completed at university or national laboratory facilities. A buyer with an existing cryogenic deposition capability could run both gates within a single device fabrication cycle, converting a selection-grade asset into a demonstrated-function asset before committing to full qualification.