A modular approach to multi-component molecular assemblies

化学可以制造技术先进的设备的想法很吸引人，因为与更传统的纳米制造方法相比，化学通常对能源的使用要求较低。这项工作属于这一一般领域。这项工作的目的是设计分子组件，从长远来看，这些组件可以组装成有用的设备。主要的困难是详细了解一个组件对另一个组件的影响，为此，我们将从有两个组件的组件开始制造和研究组件-量子比特(传统计算中使用的比特的量子等价物)和可切换分子；我们的目标是了解开关打开和关闭时量子比特发生了什么，因此我们可以选择哪些开关适合与量子比特一起使用。我们将从有两个组件的组件转移到更复杂的组件，包含两个不同的量子比特和两个不同的开关。材料将使用电子顺磁共振(EPR)光谱进行研究，这是对单电子自旋行为极其敏感的。在最简单的层面上，单电子自旋可以被视为磁铁，EPR实验涉及使用微波将电子从局部磁矩与外部磁场对准转变为与外部磁场相反。我们可以利用这些结果来找出单电子是否正在与其他电子通信，并且通过复杂的实验可以使特定的电子采用特定的方向。

The idea that technologically advanced devices could be made by chemistry is appealing because chemistry is generally less demanding in use of energy than more conventional nanofabrication approaches. This work falls into this general area. The aim of the work is to design the molecular components that could be assembled, in the long term, into useful devices. The major difficulties are to understand the influence of one component on another in detail, and to this end we will make and study assemblies starting with assemblies where there are two components - a qubit (the quantum equivalent of the bit used in conventional computing) and a switchable molecule; our aim is to understand what happens to the qubit when the switch is on and off, and hence we can chose which switches are suitable for use with qubits. From the assemblies with two components we will move to more complicated assemblies, containing two distinct qubits and two distinct switches.The materials will be studied using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, which is extremely sensitive to the behaviour of single electron spins. Single electron spins can, at the simplest level, be regarded as magnets and the EPR experiment involves using microwaves to flip the electron from having its local magnetic moment aligned with an external field to aligned opposed to the external field. We can use the results to find out if single electrons are communicating with other electrons, and with sophisticated experiments can make specific electrons adopt specific orientations.