> these molecules might be candidates for spin-selective transport and/or sensitivity to magnetic fields (...) We hope that at some point these quantum effects can be used in electronic devices which are nothing like the ones we use today.

Basically they're hoping to achieve some form of novel device, not replace existing components.

This isn't without precedent - we have examples like Hall effect and giant magnetoresistive sensors. Both of these went from "weird quantum phenomenon" to "everyone has a device in their home with a component built on this tech".

bombs with electronic triggers is one example of application of a bomb detection sensor...another one is a medial device sensor for safety on cancer medical treatment devices

The title of the paper is "Helical orbitals and circular currents in linear carbon wires"...

... but they do refer to them as "promising candidates for novel applications" which indicates actual applications are a little way off.

Incidentally, although it's easy to write these molecules in text (like C=C=C=C=C=C...) that does not really show the helical orbitals.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/sc/c8sc0546...

You could make finer resolution magnetic field sensors. For example, scanning magnetic microscopes are used to image the weak magnetic fields of integrated circuits. You can gain better insight to the design of the circuit and find weird things happening that current hardware has trouble seeing.

Why?

I wish I could answer that, probably some delusional personality trait that wants to study science instead of programming.