Issue 14, 2021

Chemical tuning of spin clock transitions in molecular monomers based on nuclear spin-free Ni(ii)

Abstract

We report the existence of a sizeable quantum tunnelling splitting between the two lowest electronic spin levels of mononuclear Ni complexes. The level anti-crossing, or magnetic “clock transition”, associated with this gap has been directly monitored by heat capacity experiments. The comparison of these results with those obtained for a Co derivative, for which tunnelling is forbidden by symmetry, shows that the clock transition leads to an effective suppression of intermolecular spin–spin interactions. In addition, we show that the quantum tunnelling splitting admits a chemical tuning via the modification of the ligand shell that determines the crystal field and the magnetic anisotropy. These properties are crucial to realize model spin qubits that combine the necessary resilience against decoherence, a proper interfacing with other qubits and with the control circuitry and the ability to initialize them by cooling.

Graphical abstract: Chemical tuning of spin clock transitions in molecular monomers based on nuclear spin-free Ni(ii)

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
23 Oct 2020
Accepted
20 Feb 2021
First published
25 Feb 2021
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2021,12, 5123-5133

Chemical tuning of spin clock transitions in molecular monomers based on nuclear spin-free Ni(II)

M. Rubín-Osanz, F. Lambert, F. Shao, E. Rivière, R. Guillot, N. Suaud, N. Guihéry, D. Zueco, A. Barra, T. Mallah and F. Luis, Chem. Sci., 2021, 12, 5123 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC05856D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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