Organic radicals offer enticing properties that span multiple research fields, from chemical reactivity to spintronics. In our group, we strive to exploit different topologies of alternant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as candidates for multifunctional materials, establish magneto-structural relationships to enhance magnetic anisotropy in metal-free compounds and propose novel routes to diradical formation in broad families of organic molecules.
With the recently obtained ERC Starting Grant, RadicalProtON will develop a new mechanism to obtain diradicals and exploit it in the context of drug design and improvement of molecular optical properties.
Some of my contributions are listed below.
Nano Lett. 2016, 16, 3, 2066–2071 & ACS Nano 2017, 11, 6, 5879–5883
In collaboration with Prof Veciana (ICMAB-CSIC) and van der Zant (Delft UT) we demonstrate that break junctions devices are extremely sensitive to molecular geometry, highlighting the need for robust fabrication methods that ensure reproducibility.
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2017, 19, 24264-24270
By exploiting their structural flexibility, we proposed a way to enhance ferromagnetism in purely of organic molecules which relies in avoiding detrimental edge effects.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 16, 5271–5275
Polyradical stabilisation is customarily enhanced by increasing delocalisation in planar systems, which biased the explored topologies. Here, we report an overlooked helical structure with preferential high-spin ground states. This structure encodes magnetic anisotropy in carbon-based molecules and represents an exciting platform that combines chirality and ferromagnetism, with potential applications in spintronics.
