Engineers at the University of Glasgow, working with collaborators in Japan and elsewhere in the UK, have used light to read the magnetic spin of electrons trapped inside a metal-organic framework, a porous crystalline material. The team reports that this is the first time spin resonance has been measured this way in this class of material, extending a technique called optically detected magnetic resonance well beyond the established quantum platforms where it was developed.
Metal-organic frameworks are prized in chemistry for their sponge-like porosity, which lets them soak up and hold specific molecules. Combining that property with optically addressable spins suggests a new kind of quantum sensor, in which the framework captures a chemical substance and its embedded spins register the encounter. The researchers suggest that a library of different frameworks could eventually function as a kind of quantum nose, detecting chemical substances with very high sensitivity.
The Glasgow contribution was led by Dr Sam Bayliss and Dr Alistair Inglis of the James Watt School of Engineering, with measurements performed at the university's Advanced Research Centre. Partners included the University of Tokyo, the University of Sheffield, Saitama University, Kobe University, the Institute for Molecular Science and JEOL Ltd. The work appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society as Optically Addressable Spins in a Metal-Organic Framework.