Researchers at Arizona State University show how tiny clusters of copper and oxygen atoms could be tailored for attaining control electron spin properties. The team set out to understand how the magnetic and electronic properties of copper clusters just can be tuned for spintronics applications.
The team used powerful laser pulses to excite neutral copper oxide clusters and watched how they relaxed back to their original state in less than a trillionth of a second. They discovered that by carefully adjusting the balance of copper and oxygen atoms, they could influence how long these excited states last — and crucially, how magnetic the clusters become.
The study was led by Scott Sayres, an associate professor with the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery and the School of Molecular Sciences at ASU.
Traditional electronics rely on the movement of electrical charge. In contrast, spintronics harnesses electrons' spins to store and process information. “Nearly every time we examine the behaviors of common materials shrunk down to the molecular scale, we find entirely new properties that do not appear in the bulk form and therefore lead us to develop new approaches to advance material science,” Sayres says. “In the case of copper oxides, we found surprisingly large magnetic moments (tiny magnetic fields associated with atoms) that are strongly tied to the local structure that arises uniquely in clusters. This exciting behavior promises to make copper oxide clusters important for many applications.”
Since copper oxides are cheap and abundant, they’re already studied for uses like water splitting for clean-energy applications. Understanding how their magnetic traits change at the smallest scales could open up new pathways for spintronics and quantum computing.