Spin doping of individual molecules by using single-atom manipulation

Being able to control the spin of magnetic molecules at the single-molecule level will make it possible to develop new spin-based nanotechnologies. Gate-field effects and electron and photon excitations have been used to achieve spin switching in molecules. Here, we show that atomic doping of molecules can be used to change the molecular spin. Furthermore, a scanning tunneling microscope was used to place or remove the atomic dopant on the molecule, allowing us to change the molecular spin in a controlled way. Bis(phthalocyaninato)yttrium (YPc ₂) molecules deposited on an Au (111) surface keep their spin-1/2 magnetic moment due to the small molecule-substrate interaction. However, when Cs atoms were carefully placed onto YPc ₂ molecules, the spin of the molecule vanished as shown by our conductance measurements and corroborated by the results of density functional theory calculations.