Recently, the latest research achievement of Prof. Wang Li and Associate Prof. Lyu Yan of our School was published in the world's top journal Physical Review Letters under the title "Giant spin-electric coupling in heterometallic porphyrin dimers" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hl44-cn9m). Nanchang University is the first affiliation of this article.
Single-molecule magnets can be regarded as the smallest functional magnetic units, and manipulating the magnetic properties of a single molecule with electric fields is a key prerequisite for their application in spin storage and quantum computing. Starting from the microscopic physical origin of the coupling between local magnetic moments, the research team of our School found that the key factor governing the strength of magnetoelectric coupling lies in whether the symmetry of the spin superexchange pathway between two local magnetic moments can be broken. Through systematic calculations of 231 heterometallic porphyrin dimers formed by 22 transition metals, they discovered that the spin-electric coupling strength of tungsten-based dimers is three to four orders of magnitude higher than that of typical two-dimensional magnetic materials. This strong coupling effect will significantly reduce the critical electric field strength required to switch a single magnetic molecule between different magnetic states, providing important theoretical support for the application of single magnetic molecules in future technologies such as high-density information storage and quantum computing.
This research received strong support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) project, the Jiangxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Photoelectric Detection, and other national and provincial research projects and platforms, as well as the national "Double First-Class" discipline construction of Materials Science and Engineering at our School.
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