Controlling the Dynamics of Three Electron Spin Qubits in a Donor-Acceptor-Radical Molecule Using Dielectric Environment Changes

Computation of Magnetic Exchange Couplings in Photoexcited Systems Based on KS-DFT

Many efforts have been made in the study of optically excited spin-coupled molecules due to their appealing features for quantum information sciences. However, the characterization of the magnetic exchange couplings occurring from the photoexcitation is challenging experimentally. In this context, theoretical determinations play a critical role and must provide evaluations with rigorous and cost-effective strategies. This work presents a new approach to compute magnetic exchange couplings in photoexcited systems based on the recently generalized decomposition/recomposition method (David et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2024, 6, 8952-8964). This corresponds to the first application of KS-DFT in this context and offers both a completely general method and a powerful rationalization tool. This strategy is applied to mono- and biradical-based molecules recently synthesized by Kirk and co-workers.

Detecting Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in Randomly Oriented Radical Pairs Photogenerated by Hole Transfer

Chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) has the potential to control the spin dynamics of chiral molecules for applications in quantum information science. Here we investigate the effect of CISS on the spin dynamics of radical pair formation following photodriven hole transfer in a pair of donor-chiral bridge-acceptor (D-Bχ-A) enantiomers, where D = 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl[1,3]-dioxolo[4,5-f][1,3]benzodioxole, Bχ = (R)- or (S)-2,2'-dimethoxy-4,4'-diphenyl-5,5',6,6',7,7',8,8'-octahydro-1,1'-binaphthalene, and A = naphthalene-(1,4:5,8)-bis(dicarboximide). The results are compared to those obtained on the corresponding achiral D-B-A reference molecule in which B = 2″,3',5',6″-tetramethyl-1,1':4',1″:4″,1‴-quaterphenyl. Photoexcitation of A in a randomly oriented sample of D-Bχ-A in glassy butyronitrile at 85 K results in subnanosecond two-step hole transfer from 1*A to D to form D•+-Bχ-A•-, which was characterized using time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance (TREPR) spectroscopy at X (9.6 GHz), Q (34 GHz), and W (94 GHz) bands. The spectra show line shape changes that are characteristic of a ∼38% contribution of CISS to the spin dynamics of D•+-Bχ-A•- formation. The line shape changes resulting from CISS are particularly apparent in the TREPR spectra at X-band as predicted by recent theory. These results show that (1) CISS has a significant influence on radical pair dynamics initiated by photodriven hole transfer, which is complementary to our recent electron transfer results, and (2) CISS can be detected using TREPR on radical pairs that are randomly oriented relative to an external magnetic field.

Direct observation of chirality-induced spin selectivity in electron donor-acceptor molecules

The role of chirality in determining the spin dynamics of photoinduced electron transfer in donor-acceptor molecules remains an open question. Although chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) has been demonstrated in molecules bound to substrates, experimental information about whether this process influences spin dynamics in the molecules themselves is lacking. Here we used time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to show that CISS strongly influences the spin dynamics of isolated covalent donor-chiral bridge-acceptor (D-Bχ-A) molecules in which selective photoexcitation of D is followed by two rapid, sequential electron-transfer events to yield D•+-Bχ-A•-. Exploiting this phenomenon affords the possibility of using chiral molecular building blocks to control electron spin states in quantum information applications.

Quantum Sensing of Electric Fields Using Spin-Correlated Radical Ion Pairs

Quantum sensing affords the possibility of using quantum entanglement to probe electromagnetic fields with exquisite sensitivity. In this work, we show that a photogenerated spin-correlated radical ion pair (SCRP) can be used to sense an electric field change created at one radical ion of the pair using molecular recognition. The SCRP is generated within a covalent donor-chromophore-acceptor system PXX-PMI-NDI, 1, where PXX = peri-xanthenoxanthene, PMI = 1,6-bis(p-t-butylphenoxy)perylene-3,4-dicarboximide, and NDI = naphthalene-1,8:4,5-bis(dicarboximide). The electron-rich PXX donor in 1 acts as a guest molecule that can be encapsulated selectively by a tetracationic cyclophane ExBox⁴⁺ host to give a supramolecular complex 1 ⊂ ExBox⁴⁺. Selective photoexcitation of the PMI chromophore results in ultrafast generation of the PXX^•+-PMI-NDI^•- SCRP. When PXX is encapsulated by ExBox⁴⁺, the cyclophane generates an electric field that repels the positive charge on PXX^•+ within PXX^•+-PMI-NDI^•-, reducing the SCRP distance, i.e., the distance between the centers-of-charge on the donor and acceptor. Pulse-EPR measurements are used to measure the coherent oscillations created primarily by the electron-electron dipolar coupling in the SCRP, which yields the distance between the two charges (spins) of PXX^•+-PMI-NDI^•-. The experimental results show that the distance between PXX^•+ and NDI^•- decreases when ExBox⁴⁺ encapsulates PXX^•+, which demonstrates that the SCRP can function as a quantum sensor to detect electric field changes in the vicinity of the radical ions.

Quantum Gate Operations on a Spectrally Addressable Photogenerated Molecular Electron Spin-Qubit Pair

Sub-nanosecond photodriven electron transfer from a molecular donor to an acceptor can be used to generate a radical pair (RP) having two entangled electron spins in a well-defined pure initial singlet quantum state to serve as a spin-qubit pair (SQP). Achieving good spin-qubit addressability is challenging because many organic radical ions have large hyperfine couplings (HFCs) in addition to significant g-anisotropy, which results in significant spectral overlap. Moreover, using radicals with g-factors that deviate significantly from that of the free electron results in difficulty generating microwave pulses with sufficiently large bandwidths to manipulate the two spins either simultaneously or selectively as is necessary to implement the controlled-NOT (CNOT) quantum gate essential for quantum algorithms. Here, we address these issues by using a covalently linked donor-acceptor(1)-acceptor(2) (D-A₁-A₂) molecule with significantly reduced HFCs that uses fully deuterated peri-xanthenoxanthene (PXX) as D, naphthalenemonoimide (NMI) as A₁, and a C₆₀ derivative as A₂. Selective photoexcitation of PXX within PXX-d₉-NMI-C₆₀ results in sub-nanosecond, two-step electron transfer to generate the long-lived PXX^•+-d₉-NMI-C₆₀^•- SQP. Alignment of PXX^•+-d₉-NMI-C₆₀^•- in the nematic liquid crystal 4-cyano-4'-(n-pentyl)biphenyl (5CB) at cryogenic temperatures results in well-resolved, narrow resonances for each electron spin. We demonstrate both single-qubit gate and two-qubit CNOT gate operations using both selective and nonselective Gaussian-shaped microwave pulses and broadband spectral detection of the spin states following the gate operations.

Exchange Spin Coupling in Optically Excited States

In optically excited states in molecules and materials, coupling between local electron spins plays an important role for their photoemission properties and is interesting for potential applications in quantum information processing. Recently, it was experimentally demonstrated that the photogenerated local spins in donor-acceptor metal complexes can interact with the spin of an attached radical, resulting in a spin-coupling-dependent mixing of excited doublet states, which controls the local spin density distributions on donor, acceptor, and radical subunits in optically excited states. In this work, we propose an energy-difference scheme to evaluate spin coupling in optically excited states, using unrestricted and spin-flip simplified time-dependent density functional theory. We apply it to three platinum complexes which have been studied experimentally to validate our methodology. We find that all computed coupling constants are in excellent agreement with the experimental data. In addition, we show that the spin coupling between donor and acceptor in the optically excited state can be fine-tuned by replacing platinum with palladium and zinc in the structure. Besides the two previously discussed excited doublet states (one bright and one dark), our calculations reveal a third, bright excited doublet state which was not considered previously. This third state possesses the inverse spin polarization on donor and acceptor with respect to the previously studied bright doublet state and is by an order of magnitude brighter, which might be interesting for optically controlling local spin polarizations with potential applications in spin-only information transfer and manipulation of connected qubits.

Enhanced Intersystem Crossing due to Resonant Energy Transfer to a Remote Spin

A new mechanism for enhanced intersystem crossing in coupled three-spin systems consisting of a chromophore and an attached radical is proposed. It is shown that if the unpaired electron of the radical experiences spin-orbit coupling and different exchange interactions with the two unpaired electron spins of the chromophore, energy transfer from the chromophore to the radical can occur together with singlet-triplet intersystem crossing in the chromophore. The efficiency of this process increases dramatically when the electronic excitation of the radical is resonant with the S₁-T₁ energy gap of the chromophore. The types of systems in which this resonance could be achieved are discussed, and it is suggested that the mechanism could result in improved sensitization in near-IR emitting lanthanide dyes.