Quantum Computing for Corrosion-Resistant Materials and Anti-Corrosive Coatings Design

Recent estimates indicate that the U.S. Department of Defense spends over $20 billion USD annually on corrosion-related maintenance. This expenditure is accompanied by a substantial loss in asset readiness, ranging from 10 Moreover, the global costs associated with corrosion damage have been estimated at an astonishing $2.5 trillion USD per year, or approximately 3.4 GDP in 2016. This project aims to describe how quantum computers might be leveraged to fundamentally change the way material-environment interactions are modeled for material discovery, selection, and design. This project also seeks to understand the plausibility and utility of replacing portions of classical computing workflows with algorithms optimized for quantum computing hardware. The utility of quantum computers is explored through the lens of two industrially relevant problems: (1) characterizing magnesium alloy corrosion properties in aqueous environments and (2) identifying stable niobium-rich alloys with corrosion resistance at temperatures above 1500K. This paper presents an end-to-end analysis of the complexity of both classical and quantum algorithms used in application workflows. Resource estimates are produced using a custom software package, pyLIQTR, based on the qubitized Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) algorithm. Estimates for the two aforementioned applications show that industrially-relevant computational models that have the potential to deliver commercial utility require quantum computers with thousands to hundreds of thousands of logical qubits and the ability to execute 10^13 to 10^19 T-gates. These estimates represent an upper bound and motivate continued research into improved quantum algorithms and resource reduction techniques.