Electrically Induced Crystal Field Distortion in a Ferroelectric Perovskite Revealed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance.

The magnetoelectric material has attracted multidisciplinary interest in the past decade for its potential to accommodate various functions. Especially, the external electric field can drive the quantum behaviors of such materials via the spin-electric coupling effect, with the advantages of high spatial resolution and low energy cost. In this work, the spin-electric coupling effect of Mn2+-doped ferroelectric organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite [(CH3)3NCH2Cl]CdCl3 with a large piezoelectric effect was investigated. The electric field manipulation efficiency for the allowed transitions was determined by the pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance. The orientation-included Hamiltonian of the spin-electric coupling effect was obtained via simulating the angle-dependent electric field modulated continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance. The results demonstrate that the applied electric field affects not only the principal values of the zero-field splitting tensor but also its principal axis directions. This work proposes and exemplifies a route to understand the spin-electric coupling effect originating from the crystal field imposed on a spin ion being modified by the applied electric field, which may guide the rational screening and designing of hybrid perovskite ferroelectrics that satisfy the efficiency requirement of electric field manipulation of spins in quantum information applications.

Angular-resolved Rabi oscillations of orthorhombic spins in a Co(II) molecular qubit.

Magnetic molecules are promising candidates for quantum information processing (QIP) due to their tunable electron structures and quantum properties. A high spin Co(II) complex, CoH2dota, is studied for its potential to be used as a quantum bit (qubit) utilizing continuous wave (CW) and pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy at low temperature. On the X-band microwave energy scale, the system can be treated as an effective spin 1/2 with a strongly anisotropic g-tensor resulting from the significant spin-orbital coupling. An experimental and theoretical study is conducted to investigate the anisotropic Rabi oscillations of the two magnetically equivalent spin centres with different orientations in a single crystal sample, which aims to verify the relationship between the Rabi frequency and the orientation of the g-tensor. The findings of this study show that an effective quantum manipulation method is developed for orthorhombic spin systems.

Radical-Induced Photochromic Silver(I) Metal-Organic Frameworks: Alternative Topology, Dynamic Photoluminescence and Efficient Photothermal Conversion Modulated by Anionic Guests.

Photogenerated radicals are an indispensable member of the state-of-the-art photochromic material family, as they can effectively modulate the photoluminescence and photothermal conversion performance of radical-induced photochromic complexes. Herein, two novel radical-induced photochromic metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), [Ag(TEPE)](AC) ⋅ 7/4H2O ⋅ 5/4EtOH (1) and [Ag(TEPE)](NC) ⋅ 3H2O ⋅ EtOH (2), are reported. Distinctly different topological networks can be obtained by judiciously introducing alternative π-conjugated anionic guests, including a new topological structure (named as sfm) first reported in this work, describing as 4,4,4,4-c net. EPR data and UV-Vis spectra prove the radical-induced photochromic mechanism. Dynamic photochromism exhibits tunability in a wide CIE color space, with a linear segment from yellow to red for 1, while a curved coordinate line for 2, resulting in colorful emission from blue to orange. Moreover, photogenerated TEPE* radicals effectively activate the near-infrared (NIR) photothermal conversion effect of MOFs. Under 1 W cm-2 808 nm laser irradiation, the surface temperatures of photoproducts 1* and 2* can reach ~160 °C and ~120 °C, respectively, with competitive NIR photothermal conversion efficiencies η=51.8 % (1*) and 36.2 % (2*). This work develops a feasible electrostatic compensation strategy to accurately introduce photoactive anionic guests into MOFs to construct multifunctional radical-induced photothermal conversion materials with tunable photoluminescence behavior.

Rational Design of an Air-Stable, High-Spin Diradical with Diazapyrene.

Stable carbon-based polyradicals exhibiting strong spin-spin coupling and slow depolarization processes are particularly attractive functional materials. A new molecular motif synthesized by a convenient method that allows the integration of stable, high-spin radicals to (hetero)aromatic polycycles has been developed, as illustrated by a non-Kekulé diradical showing a triplet ground state with long persistency (τ1/2 ≈31 h) in air. Compared to the widely used 1,3-phenylene, the newly designed (diaza)pyrene-4,10-diyl moiety is for the first time demonstrated to confer ferromagnetic (FM) spin coupling, allowing delocalized non-disjoint SOMOs. With the X-ray crystallography unambiguously proving the diradical structure, the triplet ground state was thoroughly characterized. A large ΔES-T of 1.1 kcal/mol, proving the strong FM coupling effect, was revealed consistently by superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) measurements and variable-temperature electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, while the zero-field splitting and triplet nutation characters were examined by continuous-wave and pulsed EPR spectroscopy. A millisecond spin-lattice relaxation time was also detected. The current study not only offers a new molecular motif enabling FM coupling between carbon-based spins, but more importantly presents a general method for installing stable polyradicals into functional π-systems.

Energy-Trapping Management in X-Ray Storage Phosphors for Flexible 3D Imaging.

X-ray imaging has received sustained attention for healthcare diagnostics and nondestructive inspection. To develop photonic materials with tunable photophysical properties in principle accelerates radiation detection technologies. Here the rational design and synthesis of doped halide perovskite CsCdCl3 :Mn2+ , R4+ (R = Ti, Zr, Hf, and Sn) are reported as next generation X-ray storage phosphors, and the capability is greatly improved by trap management via Mn2+ site occupation manipulation and heterovalent substitution. Specially, CsCdCl3 :Mn2+ , Zr4+ displays zero-thermal-quenching (TQ) radioluminescence and anti-TQ X-ray-activated persistent luminescence even up to 448 K, further revealing the charge-carrier compensation and redeployment mechanisms. X-ray imaging with the resolution of 12.5 lp mm-1 is demonstrated, and convenient 3D X-ray imaging for the curved objects is realized in a time-lapse manner. This work demonstrates efficient modulation of energy traps to achieve high storage capacities and promote future research into flexible X-ray detectors.

Multiprocessing Quantum Computing through Hyperfine Couplings in Endohedral Fullerene Derivatives.

Magnetic molecules have shown great potential in quantum information processing due to the chemical tunablity of their quantum behaviors. Chemical derivatives of endohedral nitrogen fullerenes with long coherence time and rich energy levels were synthesized and studied to demonstrate the ability of multiprocessing in quantum information using electron magnetic resonance. After initialization of the 12-levelled spin system, subgroups of spin energy levels coursed by the hyperfine couplings can be selectively manipulated. The cooperatively combining of the parallel calculations enabled quantum error correction, increasing the correct rate by up to 17.82 %. Also, different subgroups of transitions divided by hyperfine coupling can be treated as independent qubits, and multi-task quantum computing were realized by performing Z-gate and X-gate simultaneously, which accelerates the overall gating speed.

Spin-Electric Coupling with Anisotropy-Induced Vanishment and Enhancement in Molecular Ferroelectrics.

Manipulating quantum properties by electric fields using spin-electric coupling (SEC) effects promises spatial addressability. While several studies about inorganic materials showing the SEC functionality have been reported, the vastly tunable crystal structures of molecular ferroelectrics provide a range of rationally designable materials yet to be exploited. In this work, Mn2+-doped molecular ferroelectrics are chosen to experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of achieving the quantum coherent SEC effect in molecular ferroelectrics for the first time. The electric field pulse applied between Hahn-echo pulses in electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) experiments causes controllable phase shifts via manipulating of the zero-field splitting (ZFS) of the Mn(II) ions. Detailed investigations of the aMn crystal showed unexpected SEC vanishment and enhancement at different crystal orientations, which were elucidated by studying the spin Hamiltonian and magnetic anisotropy. With the enhanced SEC efficiency being achieved (0.68 Hz m/V), this work discovers an emerging material library of molecular ferroelectrics to implement coherent quantum control with selective and tunable SEC effects toward highly scalable quantum gates.

High-mobility semiconducting polymers with different spin ground states.

Organic semiconductors with high-spin ground states are fascinating because they could enable fundamental understanding on the spin-related phenomenon in light element and provide opportunities for organic magnetic and quantum materials. Although high-spin ground states have been observed in some quinoidal type small molecules or doped organic semiconductors, semiconducting polymers with high-spin at their neutral ground state are rarely reported. Here we report three high-mobility semiconducting polymers with different spin ground states. We show that polymer building blocks with small singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔES-T) could enable small ΔES-T gap and increase the diradical character in copolymers. We demonstrate that the electronic structure, spin density, and solid-state interchain interactions in the high-spin polymers are crucial for their ground states. Polymers with a triplet ground state (S = 1) could exhibit doublet (S = 1/2) behavior due to different spin distributions and solid-state interchain spin-spin interactions. Besides, these polymers showed outstanding charge transport properties with high hole/electron mobilities and can be both n- and p-doped with superior conductivities. Our results demonstrate a rational approach to obtain high-mobility semiconducting polymers with different spin ground states.

Implementation of Quantum Level Addressability and Geometric Phase Manipulation in Aligned Endohedral Fullerene Qudits.

Endohedral nitrogen fullerenes have been proposed as building blocks for quantum information processing due to their long spin coherence time. However, addressability of the individual electron spin levels in such a multiplet system of 4 S3/2 has never been achieved because of the molecular isotropy and transition degeneracy among the Zeeman levels. Herein, by molecular engineering, we lifted the degeneracy by zero-field splitting effects and made the multiple transitions addressable by a liquid-crystal-assisted method. The endohedral nitrogen fullerene derivatives with rigid addends of spiro structure and large aspect ratios of regioselective bis-addition improve the ordering of the spin ensemble. These samples empower endohedral-fullerene-based qudits, in which the transitions between the 4 electron spin levels were respectively addressed and coherently manipulated. The quantum geometric phase manipulation, which has long been proposed for the advantages in error tolerance and gating speed, was implemented in a pure electron spin system using molecules for the first time.

A Stable Triplet-Ground-State Conjugated Diradical Based on a Diindenopyrazine Skeleton.

High-spin conjugated radicals have great potential in magnetic materials and organic spintronics. However, to obtain high-spin conjugated radicals is still quite challenging due to their poor stability. We report the successful synthesis and isolation of a stable triplet conjugated diradical, 10,12-diaryldiindeno[1,2-b:2',1'-e]pyrazine (m-DIP). With the m-xylylene analogue skeleton containing electron-deficient sp2 -nitrogen atoms, m-DIP displays significant aromatic character within its pyrazine ring and its spin density mainly delocalizes on the meta-pyrazine unit, making it a triplet ground state conjugated diradical. Our work provides an effective "spin density tuning" strategy for stable high-spin conjugated radicals.

Tri-Manganese(III) Salen-Based Cryptands: A Metal Cooperative Antioxidant Strategy that Overcomes Ischemic Stroke Damage In Vivo.

Oxidative stress is one of the hallmarks of ischemic stroke. Catalase-based (CAT) biomimetic complexes are emerging as promising therapeutic candidates that are expected to act as neuroprotectants for ischemic stroke by decreasing the damaging effects from H2O2. Unfortunately, these molecules result in the unwanted production of the harmful hydroxyl radical, HO•. Here, we report a series of salen-based tri-manganese (Mn(III)) metallocryptands (1-3) that function as catalase biomimetics. These cage-like molecules contain a unique "active site" with three Mn centers in close proximity, an arrangement designed to facilitate metal cooperativity for the effective dismutation of H2O2 with minimal HO• production. In fact, significantly greater oxygen production is seen for 1-3 as compared to the monomeric Mn(Salen) complex, 1c. The most promising system, 1, was studied in further detail and found to confer a greater therapeutic benefit both in vitro and in vivo than the monomeric control system, 1c, as evident from inter alia studies involving a rat model of ischemic stroke damage and supporting histological analyses. We thus believe that metallocryptand 1 and its analogues represent a new and seemingly promising strategy for treating oxidative stress related disorders.

Amination of the Gd@C82 endohedral fullerene: tunable substitution effect on quantum coherence behaviors.

The core-shell structure of endohedral fullerene-based anisotropic magnetic molecules of high spin with long coherence time could help scale up quantum systems. In this research, by amination of Gd@C82 with morpholine, three derivatives are functionalized with 5, 7 and 9 morpholine groups providing an interesting model to investigate the relationship between the quantum coherence and the spin environment. The original radical located on the carbon cage is successfully quenched, affording a quantum phase memory times (T M) over 5 µs at 5 K. By increasing the number of substitution groups, spin-lattice relaxation times (T 1) also show significant enhancement due to the interaction variation between the molecules and the environments. We found that the T M of the three molecules show no obvious difference below 10 K, while they are limited by T 1 at higher temperatures. In this work, the variable functional groups are able to tune both T 1 and T M, offering the possibility for application of high-spin magnetic molecules in the field of quantum information processing.

Electric field manipulation enhanced by strong spin-orbit coupling: promoting rare-earth ions as qubits.

Quantum information processing based on magnetic ions has potential for applications as the ions can be modified in their electronic properties and assembled by a variety of chemical methods. For these systems to achieve individual spin addressability and high energy efficiency, we exploited the electric field as a tool to manipulate the quantum behaviours of the rare-earth ion which has strong spin-orbit coupling. A Ce:YAG single crystal was employed with considerations to the dynamics and the symmetry requirements. The Stark effect of the Ce3+ ion was observed and measured. When demonstrated as a quantum phase gate, the electric field manipulation exhibited high efficiency which allowed up to 57 π/2 operations before decoherence with optimized field direction. It was also utilized to carry out quantum bang-bang control, as a method of dynamic decoupling, and the refined Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. Our experiments highlighted rare-earth ions as potentially applicable qubits because they offer enhanced spin-electric coupling which enables high-efficiency quantum manipulation.

Observation of the asphericity of 4f-electron density and its relation to the magnetic anisotropy axis in single-molecule magnets.

The distribution of electrons in the 4f orbitals of lanthanide ions is often assigned a crucial role in the design of single-molecule magnets, which maintain magnetization in zero external field. Optimal spatial complementarity between the 4f-electron density and the ligand field is key to maximizing magnetic anisotropy, which is an important factor in the ability of lanthanide complexes to display single-molecule magnet behaviour. Here we have experimentally determined the electron density distribution in two dysprosium molecular complexes by interpreting high-resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction with a multipole model. The ground-state 4f-electron density is found to be an oblate ellipsoid, as is often deduced from a simplified Sievers model that assumes a pure |±15/2> ground-state doublet for the lanthanide ion. The large equatorial asymmetry-determined by a model wavefunction-was found to contain considerable MJ mixing of |±11/2> and only 81% of |±15/2>. The experimental molecular magnetic easy axes were recovered, and found to deviate by 13.1° and 8.7° from those obtained by ab initio calculations.

Modification of TiO2 Nanoparticles with Organodiboron Molecules Inducing Stable Surface Ti3+ Complex.

As one of the most promising semiconductor oxide materials, titanium dioxide (TiO2) absorbs UV light but not visible light. To address this limitation, the introduction of Ti3+ defects represents a common strategy to render TiO2 visible-light responsive. Unfortunately, current hurdles in Ti3+ generation technologies impeded the widespread application of Ti3+ modified materials. Herein, we demonstrate a simple and mechanistically distinct approach to generating abundant surface-Ti3+ sites without leaving behind oxygen vacancy and sacrificing one-off electron donors. In particular, upon adsorption of organodiboron reagents onto TiO2 nanoparticles, spontaneous electron injection from the diboron-bound O2- site to adjacent Ti4+ site leads to an extremely stable blue surface Ti3+‒O-· complex. Notably, this defect generation protocol is also applicable to other semiconductor oxides including ZnO, SnO2, Nb2O5, and In2O3. Furthermore, the as-prepared photoelectronic device using this strategy affords 103-fold higher visible light response and the fabricated perovskite solar cell shows an enhanced performance.

Single-Crystal Study of a Low Spin Co(II) Molecular Qubit: Observation of Anisotropic Rabi Cycles.

A mononuclear low spin ( S = 1/2) Co(II) molecule crystallized in a 4-fold symmetry is fully investigated by CW and pulsed EPR on a single crystal sample. The quantum phase memory time of the molecule around 1 µs at 5 K is direction-independent, while the Rabi oscillation frequency is anisotropic. The spin Hamiltonian analyses reveal that the anisotropic Landé factor and hyperfine tensor do not influence the anisotropy apparently when the microwave magnetic field is applied along a certain direction. It is considered that the possibly involved nuclear spin forbidden transitions may be responsible for the small distinction of Rabi frequencies in two directions.

Qubit crossover in the endohedral fullerene Sc3C2@C80.

The core-shell structure of endohedral fullerenes results in good protection of the encapsulated spin carriers from the environment. In this research, the quantum coherence behavior of the endohedral fullerene Sc3C2@C80 in CS2 solution is characterized from 5 K to room temperature. Below the critical temperature of around 140 K, the inner group is hindered, and the EPR spectrum consists of a single broad line. The spin carriers display a maximum phase memory time of 17.2(7) µs at 10 K. In the high temperature region, the inner group is mobile, and the EPR spectrum consists of 22 homogeneously broadened lines due to isotropic hyperfine coupling. The maximum phase memory time for each transition is around 139(1) ns at 200 K which allows arbitrary superposition state manipulations to be performed. This research demonstrates that Sc3C2@C80 displays temperature-crossover behaviour due to weak interaction between the Sc3C2 core and the C80 shell.

Mapping the Magnetic Anisotropy at the Atomic Scale in Dysprosium Single-Molecule Magnets.

The anisotropy of the magnetic properties of molecular magnets is a key descriptor in the search for improved magnets. Herein, it is shown how an analytical approach using single-crystal polarized neutron diffraction (PND) provides direct access to atomic magnetic susceptibility tensors. The technique was applied for the first time to two Dy-based single-molecule magnets and showed clear axial atomic susceptibility for both DyIII ions. For the triclinic system, bulk magnetization methods are not symmetry-restricted, and the experimental magnetic easy axes from both PND, angular-resolved magnetometry (ARM), and theoretical approaches all match reasonably well. ARM curves simulated from the molecular susceptibility tensor determined with PND show strong resemblance with the experimental ones. For the monoclinic compound, comparison can only be made with the theoretically calculated magnetic anisotropy, and in this case PND yields an easy-axis direction that matches that predicted by electrostatic methods. Importantly, this technique allows the determination of all elements of the magnetic susceptibility tensor and not just the easy-axis direction, as is available from electrostatic predictions. Furthermore, it has the capacity to provide each of the anisotropic magnetic susceptibility tensors for all independent magnetic ions in a molecule and thus allows studies on polynuclear complexes and compounds of higher crystalline symmetry than triclinic.

Chemical Modification toward Long Spin Lifetimes in Organic Conjugated Radicals.

Organic semiconductors for spin-based devices require long spin relaxation times. Understanding their spin relaxation mechanisms is critical to organic spintronic devices and applications for quantum information processing. However, reports on the spin relaxation mechanisms of organic conjugated molecules are rare and the research methods are also limited. Herein, we study the molecular design and spin relaxation mechanisms by systematically varying the structure of a conjugated radical. We found that solid-state relaxation times of organic materials are largely different from that in solution state. We demonstrate that substitution of a lower gyromagnetic ratio nucleus (e. g. D, Cl) on the para-position of the aryl rings in the triphenylmethyl (TM) radical can significantly improve their coherence times (Tm ). Flexible thin films based on such radicals exhibit ultra-long spin-lattice relaxation times (T1 ) up to 35.6(6) µs and Tm up to 1.08(4) µs under ambient conditions, which are among the longest values in films. More importantly, using the TM radical derivative (5CM), we observed room-temperature quantum coherence and Rabi cycles in thin film for the first time, suggesting that organic conjugated radicals have great potentials for spin-based information processing.