Quantum Spin-1/2 Rings Built from [2]Triangulene Molecular Units
Abstract
Quantum spin rings represent fundamental model systems that exhibit distinctive quantum phenomena-such as quantum critical behavior and quasiparticle excitations-arising from their periodic boundary conditions and enhanced quantum fluctuations. Here, we report the on-surface synthesis and atomic-scale characterization of antiferromagnetic S=1/2 quantum spin rings composed of pristine and unmodified [2]triangulene units on a Au(111) surface. Using stepwise on-surface synthesis followed by STM tip-induced dehydrogenation, we precisely constructed cyclic five- and six-membered spin rings and investigated their spin states via scanning probe microscopy and multireference calculations. Nc-AFM imaging reveals that the six-membered ring retains a planar geometry, whereas the five-membered ring exhibits pronounced structural distortion. The six-membered ring hosts a uniform excitation gap that can be accurately described by a Heisenberg spin model and multireference CASCI calculations. In contrast, the distorted five-membered ring displays spin ground states with asymmetric spatial distributions due to degeneracy lifting induced by structural distortion. Our findings establish a versatile molecular platform for exploring correlated magnetism and quantum spin phenomena in cyclic organic magnetic architectures with disorder.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.11593,
title = {Quantum Spin-1/2 Rings Built from [2]Triangulene Molecular Units},
author = {Can Li and Manish Kumar and Ying Wang and Diego Manuel Soler Polo and Yi-Jun Wang and He Qi and Liang Liu and Xiaoxue Liu and Dandan Guan and Yaoyi Li and Hao Zheng and Canhua Liu and Jinfeng Jia and Pei-Nian Liu and Pavel Jelinek and Deng-Yuan Li and Shiyong Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.11593},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
30 pages, 4 figures