Researchers have found a way to control the interaction of light and quantum 'spin' in organic semiconductors, that works even at room temperature.
Spin is the term for the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons, which is referred to as up or down. Using the up/down spin states of electrons instead of the 0 and 1 in conventional computer logic could transform the way in which computers process information. And sensors based on quantum principles could vastly improve our abilities to measure and study the world around us.
"These unpaired spins change the rules for what happens when a photon is absorbed and electrons are moved up to a higher energy level," said first author Sebastian Gorgon, from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory."We've been working with systems where there is one net spin, which makes them good for light emission and making LEDs."
Organic semiconductors are the current state-of-the-art for lighting and commercial displays, and they could be a more sustainable alternative to silicon for solar cells. However, they have not yet been widely studied for quantum applications, such as quantum computing or quantum sensing. The researchers designed a new family of materials by first determining how they wanted the electron spins to behave. Using this bottom-up approach, they were able to control the properties of the end material by using a building block method and changing the 'bridges' between different modules of the molecule. These bridges were made of anthracene, a type of hydrocarbon.
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