A team led by Professors Justin Caram, Anastassia Alexandrova, and Paula Diaconescu, with Wes Campbell from UCLA Physics and Astronomy, have developed a new platform for magnetic sensing technology, they term “atom-like molecular sensors” (ALMS). ALMS takes advantage of the narrow absorption linewidths of ytterbium complexes to perform magnetic field sensing in a liquid environment which they analogize to state-of-the-art quantum sensing in atomic vaper cells.
A research collaboration led by the team was published on August 8th in the prestigious journal Science. This interdisciplinary study was led by a dynamic group of female Ph.D. students as lead authors from each group, all of whom have now graduated.
This manuscript titled, “Toward liquid cell quantum sensing: Ytterbium complexes with ultranarrow absorption”, highlights the potential of lanthanide complexes to be used in precision magnetometry and showcases the advancements towards their usage in quantum sensing.
The team proposed a liquid analog to atomic vapor cells based on a ferrocene-supported ytterbium complex that exhibits an ultranarrow absorption linewidth in solution at room temperature. Narrow linewidths enabled the detection of magnetic circular dichroism in ambient conditions, used to sense weak magnetic fields at the earth scale. This new technology is termed “atom-like molecular sensor” (ALMS), which highlights the innovative application of optical techniques from atomic physics to solutions of lanthanide complexes.
The ALMS measurements were complemented by rigorous synthetic and theoretical characterizations. The molecular structure of the ytterbium complexes was elucidated by single crystal X-ray diffraction measurements. The crystal structure revealed an anisotropic coordination environment, which was shown theoretically to increase the intensity of the optical transitions used to detect magnetic fields.
This work was born out of six years of collaboration, which started with a conversation between Caram and Diaconescu that piqued their interest in pursuing the optical properties of single molecule magnets. This study exemplifies the unexplored regions at the intersection of chemistry and physics that can lead to innovative research.
“It was both an incredible opportunity and a challenge to collaborate with scientists from four different disciplines. I learned a lot from working with Changling, Yi, and Claire. It’s rare to see an all-female team lead such a big research endeavor, and I am happy to see our hard work get recognized,” said Dr. Ashley Shin.
Dr. Ashley Shin (Ph.D. ’23, Caram group) is now a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar in his nano-optics division at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. Dr. Changling Zhao (Ph.D. ’23, Campbell group) is now a packaging engineer at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon. Dr. Claire Dickerson (Ph.D. ’24, Alexandrova group) is now a scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. Dr. Yi Shen (Ph.D. ’23, Diaconescu group) is now at Eli Lilly. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation funded Center for Chemical Innovation; Advanced Molecular Architectures for Quantum Information Science (AMAQIS) under grant number CHE-2221453, and National Science Foundation grant CHE-1809116.
Article by Dr. Ashley Shin, ashleyshin.j@gmail.com.
