Seminar

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Speaker

Roberta Sessoli
Professor of Chemistry
University of Florence

Bio

Roberta Sessoli developed her career at the University of Florence where she is full professor of Chemistry since 2012. She played a key part in the original discovery of single-molecule magnets (SMM), a broad class of molecular materials in which non-interacting molecules exhibit magnetic memory (hysteresis and coercive field) and quantum effects. This seminal discovery opened up an entirely new field of research in magnetism and nanoscience. Her current interests include the interplay between magnetism and chirality, magnetic molecules on surfaces to form hybrid interfaces for spintronics, and molecules with highly coherent spin dynamics for quantum information

Abstract

Implementation of modern Quantum Technologies might benefit from the remarkable quantum properties shown by molecular spin systems.The versatility of the molecular approach combined with rational design has recently boosted the operativity temperature of molecules acting as bits of memory, otherwise known as Single-Molecule Magnets. When stable in solution the same molecules behave as very efficient pseudocontact shift agents in NMR. Molecular spins, if characterized by long coherence time, can also act as quantum bits, with great potential for the implementation of embedded quantum error correction or quantum gates and quantum simulators. Our research has been focused on the rationalization of the main parameters governing spin dynamics in magnetic molecules, with special attention for vibrational properties, indeed the Achille’s heel of magnetic molecules. Our efforts have been directed also to molecules that can be deposited on a surface and addressed using scanning probe techniques, such as metal phthalocyanines porphyrins and organometallic sandwich compounds. The coupling of spin degrees of freedom with the electric field is mandatory to achieve single-molecule control, and some of our recent achievements in this direction will be also discussed.