Structural Manipulation of Spin Excitations in a Molecular Junction.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39475061.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c04075 and PMC identifier 11566111.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Single metallocene molecules act as sensitive spin detectors when decorating the probe of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). However, the impact of the atomic-scale electrode details on the molecular spin state has remained elusive to date. Here, a nickelocene (Nc) STM junction is manipulated in an atomwise manner showing clearly the dependence of the spin excitation spectrum on the anchoring of Nc to Cu(111), a Cu monomer, and trimer. Moreover, while the spin state of the same Nc tip is a triplet with tunable spin excitation energies upon contacting the surface, it transitions to a Kondo-screened doublet on a Cu atom. Notably, the nontrivial magnetic exchange interaction of the molecular spin with the electron continuum of the substrate determines the spectral line shape of the spin excitations.