spin-Filtering indUced by chirality in SIngle-moLecule junctIons – FuSili

Molecular electronics, also called molecular-scale electronics, is the discipline that studies nano-electronic devices in which the charge transport occurs across a single molecule or a single layer of molecules, in order to perform simple or complex electronic functions. In recent years, the advent of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things induces a tremendous increase in the energetic needs, making it extremely important to develop new energy-efficient electronic technologies. One possible avenue to designing devices with ultra-low energy consumption is to develop spintronic devices that rely on the generation of currents with an asymmetric population of spin up and spin down carriers. It was recently shown that it is possible to observe spin-dependent charge transport through chiral molecules. This exciting new phenomenon, named Chirality Induced Spin-Selectivity (CISS), allows the generation of currents with very high spin polarizations even at room temperature. While CISS has been studied quite extensively in large area junctions over the last few years, little has been done at the single molecule level, and to date, there is still a very limited understanding about how the CISS effect can be tuned at the nanoscale by engineering the molecular properties. The multiple degrees of freedom of the system include the magnitude of the spin-orbit coupling, the strength of the chiroptical properties of the molecules, the magnetic nature of the compounds themselves or the energy alignment in the junctions. Our objective in this project will be to use coordination compounds to study the CISS effect in a rationally designed series of spintronic single-molecule nano-junctions in order to determine which parameters have a significant impact on the CISS effect at the single-molecule level.