Organic molecular heterostructures for quantum technologies

Single organic molecules, when cooled to low temperature, can make excellent photon emitters.

The emitting molecules are often included in organic crystals to protect them from environmental interactions that can cause decoherence, and the molecular transitions explored do not allow control of the spin of the electron involved.

This project aims to investigate the inclusion of organic molecules in heterostructures made from different layers of organic material that can act as donor, insulator, and acceptor layers, similar to those used in organic light emitting diodes.

The materials will be chosen to be compatible with cryogenic operation and will be integrated with control electrodes, used to tune molecule emission and inject or remove electrons from a single molecule.

Such heterostructures hold promise for electrically-triggered single photon emission, investigations of the absolute and relative energies of ground and excited states in organic systems, including triplet states, and the possibility to deterministically create radical molecular states that can enable entirely new functionality for organic spin-photon interfaces.

This cross-disciplinary PhD project will make use of advanced tools in quantum optics including photon counting and microwave control, cryogenic laser spectroscopy and microscopy, visible- and terahertz-range ultrafast spectroscopy, as well as the use of nanofabrication facilities and associated characterization tools such as the nanoESCA facility.