The development and integration of Single-Molecule Magnets (SMMs) into molecular electronic devices continue to be an exciting challenge. In such potential devices, heat generation due to the electric current is a critical issue that has to be considered upon device fabrication. To read out accurately the temperature at the submicrometer spatial range, new multifunctional SMMs need to be developed. Herein, we present the first self-calibrated molecular thermometer with SMM properties, which provides an elegant avenue to address these issues. The employment of 2,2′-bipyrimidine and 1,1,1-trifluoroacetylacetonate ligands results in a dinuclear compound, [Dy 2 (bpm)(tfaa) 6 ], which exhibits slow relaxation of the magnetization along with remarkable photoluminescent properties. This combination allows the gaining of fundamental insight in the electronic properties of the compound and investigation of optomagnetic cross-effects (Zeeman effect). Importantly, spectral variations stemming from two distinct thermal-dependent mechanisms taking place at the molecular level are used to perform luminescence thermometry over the 5–398 K temperature range. Overall, these properties make the proposed system a unique molecular luminescent thermometer bearing SMM properties, which preserves its temperature self-monitoring capability even under applied magnetic fields.

We report a comprehensive discussion of quantum interference effects due to the finite structure of excitons in quantum rings and their first experimental corroboration observed in the optical recombinations. Anomalous features that appear in the experiments are analyzed according to theoretical models that describe the modulation of the interference pattern by temperature and built-in electric fields.PACS numbers: 71.35.Ji, 73.21.La, 78.20.Ls, 78.67.Hc The nanoscale ring structures, or quantum rings (QRs), have attracted the interest of the scientific community due to their unique rotational symmetry and the possibility to verify quantum mechanical phenomena.[1, 2, 3] Among these, the study of Aharonov-Bohm (AB)-like effects has gained a significant impetus, [4,5,6] and these efforts have gone beyond the original discussion of the AB interpretation on the nature of electromagnetic potentials and their role in quantum mechanics. [7] It is reasonable to say that the study of coherent interference occurring in transport properties of nanoscopic QRs, as proposed in Ref. 7 encounters, at the moment, serious scale limitations which has encouraged the search for optical implications associated to AB-effects.These endeavors applied to nanoscopic QRs do not strictly meet the original conditions for the ABconfiguration since the carriers are confined within regions with finite values of magnetic field. However, we still consider an observed effect as of AB-type if it can be explained assuming that the magnetic field is ideally concentrated in the middle of the QRs, i. e., when such effect comes essentially from potential vector-mediated quantum interference. As also considered in Ref. 8, in stationary systems this interference is generally reflected in a boundary condition and it is not as explicit as in the famous picture of an AB scattering situation.In this work we consider AB-interference in excitonic states as proposed theoretically in Refs. 9, 10, 12. Instead of looking only at the oscillatory dependence on magnetic flux of the electron-hole (e − h) recombination energy during photo-luminescence (PL), we also consider the excitonic oscillator strength whose oscillatory behavior reflects directly the changes in the exciton wavefunction as the magnetic flux increases. A similar experimental work was reported in Ref. 6 for type-II QRs, however, here we study type-I systems where both electron and hole move in the ring so that the correlation between them is crucial to the oscillatory behavior found in the PL integrated intensity. The samples studied here were grown using a RIBER 32P solid-source molecular beam epitaxy chamber and the QRs were grown using the following procedure. A 0.5 µm GaAs buffer layer was grown on semi-insulating (100) GaAs substrates at 580• C, after oxide desorption. Then, it was followed by 2.2 ML of InAs and the formation of quantum dots (QDs) at 520• C. The dots were obtained using the Stranski-Krastanov growth mode. Cycles of 0.14 ML of InAs plus a 2 s interruption under As 2 flux were r...

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We investigated experimentally and theoretically the valence-band structure of wurtzite InP nanowires. The wurtzite phase, which usually is not stable for III-V phosphide compounds, has been observed in InP nanowires. We present results on the electronic properties of these nanowires using the photoluminescence excitation technique. Spectra from an ensemble of nanowires show three clear absorption edges separated by 44 meV and 143 meV, respectively. The band edges are attributed to excitonic absorptions involving three distinct valence-bands labeled: A, B, and C. Theoretical results based on "ab initio" calculation gives corresponding valence-band energy separations of 50 meV and 200 meV, respectively, which are in good agreement with the experimental results.

Mobile piezoelectric potentials are used to coherently transport electron spins in GaAs (110) quantum wells (QW) over distances exceeding 60 microm. We demonstrate that the dynamics of mobile spins under external magnetic fields depends on the direction of motion in the QW plane. This transport anisotropy is an intrinsic property of moving spins associated with the bulk inversion asymmetry of the underlying GaAs lattice.