New technologies for microelectronics, quantum computing and more are possible if the rotation of this molecule is controlled.
The easiest way to rotation a baseball is to twist your fingers. An object that is only two billionths of a meter wide requires scientists with access to world-class scientific facilities. That is less than a raindrop.
Scientists at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory are able to precisely rotation a single molecule. There is a single atom of europium. It is located at the center of a complex of atoms and has many potential applications.
The europium complex can be moved by 60 or 120 degrees to either the right or left. It is possible to control the motion of a rare earth complex. Next generation microelectronics, quantum technologies and more are included.
"Rare earth" is a lie. Many electronic devices, such as cell phones, computer hard drives, solar panels and flat screen monitors, are made from rare earth elements. Next generation microelectronics that run with relatively low power, quantum computers and more could be expanded with the ability to rotation europium molecule on demand.
The elements in the Earth's crust include rare earths. Pure rare earths are expensive to produce. It costs a lot to harvest them from waste. The europium complex would reduce the amount of rare earth needed for a particular device and would be less expensive to manufacture in mass quantities.
There is a single europium atom with a positive charge and two small molecule with a negative charge in the complex. The europium atom is at the center of the complex, while one of the small molecule is on the side.
The negative and positive charges keep the components together. The small molecule at the bottom holds the complex together. The sheet acts like a table to hold the complex in one place, just as you need a solid surface to spin a bottle.
Hla said that if you attach a complex with positive and negative charges to a metal sheet, the charges will evaporate. We were happy that that didn't happen here. The atoms in the complex surrounding the europium atom act as an insulator, preventing the charges from dissipating to the gold sheet.
The negatively charged molecule in the complex work together to control the other negatively charged molecule. The team applied electrical energy to a point on the complex through the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. The probe can control the rotation and show the complex.
The team's complex is constantly rotating at a temperature of 100Kelvin. The rotation stops when the temperature drops to 5 K.
It would not have been possible without the instruments in CNM.
The X-ray beam needed to establish that the europium atom had a positive charge was provided by the beamline in the Advanced Photon Source. The world's first beamline dedicated to the technique of synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscopy is called XTIP.
The XTIP beamline gave us the ability to study the europium-Containing molecule's chemistry. The single europium atom in the molecule has a positive charge of plus three and does not lose that charge when absorbed on the gold surface, according to the data. The retention of the charge state is important to the rotation of the molecule.
"Our main goal is to understand the properties of rare earths, which are critical materials to the U.S. industry," said Hla. Many different technologies could be impacted by this project.
The research was published in a journal.
Atomically precise control of rotational dynamics in charged rare-earth complexes on a metal surface is the topic of a paper by Tolulope Michael Ajayi and colleagues. There is a DOI titled " 10.1038/s41467- 022-33897-3".
Journal information: Nature Communications
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