This web page is dedicated to the project SpinMol, “Magnetic Molecules and Hybrid Materials for Molecular Spintronics”, a project financed by the European Research Council through the ERC Advanced Grant FP7-ERC-247384.

In this project we intend to design new magnetic molecules and new classes of magnetic molecular materials which, conveniently nanostructured, can be of interest in molecular spintronics, quantum computing and, in general, in nanomagnetism.

The project pretends to cover either the development of molecule-based materials with interesting spintronic properties (molecule-based spintronics), as well as the design and study of magnetic molecules of interest in unimolecular spintronics and quantum computing.

The objectives are the following:

As far as the molecule-based materials are concerned,
• Use of molecule-based magnets for the preparation of multilayered spintronic structures (spin valves and magnetic tunnel junctions).
• Design of molecule-based magnetic materials exhibiting multifunctional properties (ferromagnetic superconductors, magnetic multilayers and magnetic/conducting multilayers).
• Nanopatterning of magnetic nanostructures on surfaces via a molecular approach.

As far as the magnetic molecules are concerned,
• Chemical control of quantum spin dynamics and decoherence in single-molecule magnets based on magnetic polyoxometalates with the aim of developing qu-bits based on these inorganic molecules.
• Positioning and addressing magnetic polyoxometalates on surfaces.

An unconventional strategy of this project is the use of purely inorganic building blocks, as well as of inorganic magnetic molecules to design these magnetic materials, instead of using metal-organic molecular systems. This purely inorganic molecular building-block approach will benefit from the robustness of this kind of molecules and materials.

Another characteristic feature of this project is the combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches for the processing of the molecules / materials. Thus, the project will exploit the advantage of using lithographic techniques (high throughput, easy scalability, etc.) in combination with the chemical bottom-up design of the molecular system, for the nanopatterning of the materials and the positioning of the molecules on surfaces with nanoscale accuracy.

Researcher in Charge:
Prof. Eugenio Coronado

Host Institution:
Universitat de València
Institute for Molecular Science
Research Team on Molecular Material

Project start date: 1/3/2010
Project end date: 28/2/2015

Funding Body:

European Research Council