Seminar

Current electronic devices are the product of a top-down approach involving the miniaturization of their components. We are now entering an era in which the unavoidable limits imposed by quantum mechanics prevent further reductions in scale. The prospect of a bottom-up approach with electronic and spintronic devices assembled from molecular components is an intriguing alternative that is now being very actively explored. This introduces a class of versatile, sustainable and highly processable materials that could facilitate sustainable production of low energy, flexible and efficient devices. Spintronics is however based on the manipulation of electronic spin; there is unfortunately only one known example of a magnetic molecular semiconductor operating at room temperature.

In this talk we present an overview of how a combination of theoretical modelling and experimental characterisation has been used to design, synthesise and grow molecular thin films and nanostructures with tuneable magnetic coupling, charge transport and light absorption properties that are approaching the requirements for practical applications. A recent example of a film based on cobalt phthalocyanine reaching 100K and a theoretical prediction of a film with room temperature magnetism will be highlighted.

Biography
Professor Harrison is co-Director of the Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. He is the developer of multiple widely used theoretical and computational methods for the discovery and optimisation of advanced materials. His contributions include the introduction of hybrid exchange methods to solid state physics and chemistry, the computational discovery of the hardest known oxide, advances in first principles thermodynamics and the discovery of near room temperature organic ferromagnets. He has been the Professor of Computational Materials Science at Imperial College since 2000, is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Host: Prof Andrew Wee