Spectroscopy of single-molecule magnets using graphene quantum dots

Graphene’s properties as a gapless semiconductor with small heat capacity make it an ideal material for broadband hot-electron bolometers. We recently showed that graphene nanostructured into quantum dots yields bolometers with extraordinary performance [1, 2] and we are now testing these bolometers in applications requiring high sensitivity, such as spectroscopy of single molecule magnets (SMMs). SMMs can be placed directly on the graphene bolometers allowing spectroscopy studies of small amounts of these materials, as opposed to standard measurement techniques using large pellets or crystals of SMMs. We present preliminary spectroscopy studies on Mn and Co based SMMs.

[1] A. El Fatimy, R. L. Myers-Ward, A. K. Boyd, K. M. Daniels, D. K. Gaskill and P. Barbara, Nature Nanotechnology 11, 335-338 (2016).
[2] A. El Fatimy, A. Nath, B.D. Kong, A.K. Boyd, R. Myers-Ward, K.M. Daniels, M.M. Jadidi, T.E. Murphy, D.K. Gaskill, P. Barbara, arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.04498, (2017)