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Long Electron Spin Coherence Times of Atomic Hydrogen Trapped in Silsesquioxane Cages

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2023-09-19 v1 Chemical Physics

Abstract

Encapsulated atomic hydrogen in cube-shaped octa-silsesquioxane (POSS) cages of the Si8_8O12_{12}R8_8 type (where R is an organic group) is the simplest alternative stable system to paramagnetic endohedral fullerenes (N@C60_{60} or P@C60_{60}) that have been regarded as key elements of spin-based quantum technologies. Apart from common sources of decoherence like nuclear spin and spectral diffusion, all H@POSS species studied so far suffer from additional shortening of T2T_2 at low temperatures due to methyl group rotations. Here we eliminate this factor for the first time by studying the relaxation properties of the smallest methyl-free derivative of this family with R=H, namely H@T8_8H8_8. We suppress nuclear spin diffusion by applying dynamical decoupling methods and we measure electron spin coherence times T2T_2 up to 280 ±\pm 76 μ\mus at T=90T=90 K. We observe a linear dependence of the decoherence rate 1/T21/T_2 on trapped hydrogen concentrations ranging between 9×1014\times 10^{14} cm3^{-3} and 5×1015\times 10^{15} cm3^{-3} which we attribute to the spin dephasing mechanism of instantaneous diffusion and a nonuniform spatial distribution of encapsulated H atoms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.09365,
  title  = {Long Electron Spin Coherence Times of Atomic Hydrogen Trapped in Silsesquioxane Cages},
  author = {George Mitrikas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.09365},
  year   = {2023}
}