Exploring The Organometallic Route To Molecular Spin Qubits: The [Cpti(Cot)] Case

The coherence time of the 17-electron, mixed sandwich complex [CpTi(cot)], (eta(8)-cyclooctatetraene)(eta(5)-cyclopentadienyl)titanium, reaches 34 mu s at 4.5 K in a frozen deuterated toluene solution. This is a remarkable coherence time for a highly protonated molecule. The intramolecular distances between the Ti and H atoms provide a good compromise between instantaneous and spin diffusion sources of decoherence. Ab initio calculations at the molecular and crystal packing levels reveal that the characteristic low-energy ring rotations of the sandwich framework do not yield a too detrimental spin-lattice relaxation because of their small spin-phonon coupling. The volatility of [CpTi(cot)] and the accessibility of the semi-occupied, non-bonding dz2 orbital make this neutral compound an ideal candidate for single-qubit addressing on surface and quantum sensing in combination with scanning probe microscopy.