2010/05/04 by J. J. Parks, A. R. Champagne, T. A. Costi +17 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1186874
published as Science 328, 1370 (2010) · main text: 5 pages, 4 figures; supporting information attached; to appear in Science.
arxiv created 2010/05/04 · openalex publication_date 2010/06/10 · arxiv updated 2010/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The ability to make electrical contact to single molecules creates opportunities to examine fundamental processes governing electron flow on the smallest possible length scales. We report experiments in which we controllably stretched individual cobalt complexes having spin S = 1, while simultaneously measuring current flow through the molecule. The molecule's spin states and magnetic anisotropy were manipulated in the absence of a magnetic field by modification of the molecular symmetry. This control enabled quantitative studies of the underscreened Kondo effect, in which conduction electrons only partially compensate the molecular spin. Our findings demonstrate a mechanism of spin control in single-molecule devices and establish that they can serve as model systems for making precision tests of correlated-electron theories.