Washington. Oct 6 (PTI): Physicists have moved one step closer to building a quantum computer by creating a tiny 'electron superhighway' which they claim could be useful in producing the new computer that will use quantum particles in place of digital transistors found in today's microchips.

A team at Rice University says the tiny device , called a 'quantum spin Hall topological insulator' , which acts as an electron superhighway, is one of the building blocks needed to create quantum particles that store and manipulate data.

Today's computers use binary bits of data that are either ones or zeros. Quantum computers would use quantum bits, or 'qubits' , which can be both ones and zeros at the same time, thanks to the quirks of quantum mechanics . This quirk gives quantum computers a huge edge in performing particular types of calculations, said Prof Rui-Rui Du.

In the race to build quantum computers, the physicists are using various approaches create qubits.