Development of a Control Method for Conduction and Magnetism in Molecular Crystals

This study concerns development of a non-destructive method to control conduction and magnetism of molecular solids such as single crystals of charge-transfer complexes. The method is named “optical doping”, where appropriate irradiation is utilized under ambient conditions. Owing to this feature, it can be applied to a wide range of substances while measuring the properties during the control. In addition, the method adds unique conduction and magnetic properties to common insulators. Unlike other doping methods, optical doping only affects the properties and/or structures of the irradiated part of a sample while leaving the rest of the sample unchanged. There are two patterns in the optical doping. Irreversible optical doping produces junction-structures on the single molecular crystals, which exhibit characteristic behavior of semiconductor devices such as diodes and varistors. Reversible optical doping produces “giant photoconductors” and “photomagnetic conductors” by realizing unprecedented metallic photoconduction. In the latter case, localized spins are also excited to produce a Kondo system, where carriers and localized spins interact with each other. Not only the control of conduction and magnetism, the optical doping has realized the observation of physical properties in molecular crystals hardly observed under any thermodynamic condition.