Observation of biradical spin coupling through hydrogen bonds

Abstract

Investigation of intermolecular electron spin interaction is of fundamental importance in both science and technology.Here, radical pairs of all-trans retinoic acid molecules on Au(111) are created using an ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. Antiferromagnetic coupling between two radicals is identified by magnetic-field dependent spectroscopy.The measured exchange energies are from 0.1 to 1.0 meV. The biradical spin coupling is mediated through O-H$\cdots$O hydrogen bonds, as elucidated from analysis combining density functional theory calculation and a modern version of valence bond theory.

10 pages with supplemental materials, PRL accepted

References in corpus (2)

• Probing Magnetic Excitations and Correlations in Single and Coupled Spin Systems with Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy
• The Spin-Polarization of the Split Kondo State

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Nanoscale Control of Quantum States in Radical Molecules on Superconducting Pb(111)
• Simulating and investigating various dynamic aspects of the ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$-related hydrogen bond model
• Studying the effect of phonon coherence and inflow on hydrogen bond formation in the $[({\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}{)}_2{]}^m$ cluster