Looking Inside the Perchlorinated Trityl Radical/Metal Spinterface through Spectroscopy

We report on a spectroscopic multitechnique approach to study the metal/radical spinterface formed by a perchlorinated trityl radical derivative and either gold or silver. The spectroscopic fingerprint of their paramagnetic properties could be determined by comparison with their diamagnetic precursor and by DFT calculations. Thanks to the presented approach, we could gain unprecedented insight into the radical–metal interaction and how this latter perturbs the spin polarization and consequently the magnetoelectronic properties of the radical adlayer. Knowledge of the factors influencing the spinterface is an essential tool toward the tailoring of the properties of spin-based electronic devices.
We acknowledge the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for provision of synchrotron radiation beamtime at SURICAT apparatus of BESSY II, receiving funding from the FP7/2007-2013 grant agreement no. 312284. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, through “Acciones CIBER”. The Networking Research Center on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBERBBN) is an initiative funded by the VI National R&D&I Plan 2008-2011, Iniciativa Ingenio 2010, Consolider Program, CIBER Actions and financed by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III with assistance from the European Regional Development Fund. The authors also appreciate the financial support through the projects BE-WELL (CTQ2013-40480-R), granted by DGI (Spain), and GenCat (2014-SGR-17), financed by DGR (Catalunya). This work is partially supported by the Italian Ministerio dell’Instruzione dell’ Universita’ e della Ricerca through the PRIN “GRAF” (Contract 20105ZZTSE) and Progetto Premiale ABNANOTECH.