Carella Alberta, Mishra Suryakant, Ferrari Camilla, Vanossi Davide, Rossella Francesco, Pop Flavia, Avarvari Narcis, Htoon Han, Hollingsworth Jennifer A, Bowes Eric G, Majumder Somak, Jones Andrew Crandall, Fontanesi Claudio
Department of Physics, FIM, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Campi 213, 41125 Modena, Italy.
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA.
Nanoscale. 2025 Jan 29;17(5):2599-2607. doi: 10.1039/d4nr04574b.
Great efforts have been made in the last few decades to realize electronic devices based on organic molecules. A possible approach in this field is to exploit the chirality of organic molecules for the development of spintronic devices, an applicative way to implement the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. In this work we exploit enantiopure tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) derivatives as chiral inducers at the nanoscale. The aim is to make use of TTF's well-known and unique semiconducting properties, to be expressed in the fields of enantio-selectivity and the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. The experimental results shown in this paper further demonstrate how chirality and spin are deeply interrelated, as foreseen within the CISS effect theory, paving the way for the application of TTF derivatives in the field of spintronics. In this work, we demonstrate that tetramethyl-bis(ethylenedithio)-tetrathiafulvalene (TM-BEDT-TTF) (1) behaves as an efficient spin filter, as evidenced by magneto-atomic force microscopy (mc-AFM) measurements. Additionally, it is shown to be effective in transferring chirality to CdS/CdSe core-shell nanoparticles, as inferred from the analysis of circularly resolved photoluminescence spectra. This makes 1 a promising candidate for a variety of applications, ranging from plasmonics to quantum computing.
