Penn State Research Sponsorship Agreement
About the programme
A 6-year research sponsorship agreement with The Pennsylvania State University, signed in 2025. The programme pursues the optical route of Delta's research: light and spin in atomically precise gold nanoclusters, with coherence engineered by chemistry.
The research team and facilities
The programme is led by Prof. Kenneth L. Knappenberger, Jr., Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Penn State and Head of its Department of Chemistry. He formerly headed the magneto-optics programme at the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, has published 100+ peer-reviewed papers, holds the Coblentz Award in Spectroscopy, and is an elected Fellow of the AAAS and of Optica.
What the research is investigating
Atomically precise gold ‘superatom’ clusters whose optical, electronic and spin properties can be engineered by chemistry, following a published five-step ladder.
- 1Near-termPerfect the cluster structurePatents filed
- 2Near-termValidate the single quantum emitter
- 3Mid-termEngineer coherence by chemistry
- 4Mid-termDemonstrate photonic indistinguishability and entangled clustersFirst product
- 5Long-termA networked cluster deviceThe QIS device
Funding commitment and term
IP rights and licence terms
Delta holds a 100%-owned exclusive global licence over the programme's IP. The university receives a 1% royalty only on cumulative licensed sales above US$20 million — Delta retains 100% below that threshold and 99% above it.
Progress and published results
The programme's science base is published in two peer-reviewed papers — in ACS Central Science and The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (both 2025) — showing that gold clusters carry the key spin properties of today's best qubits, tunable by chemistry to nearly 40% spin polarisation. Penn State's summary of the findings: gold clusters ‘can mimic all the best properties of the trapped gaseous ions with the benefit of scalability’ (Penn State article). This published work underpins the three full patent applications filed in June 2026 (RNS).