The 64th JSAP Spring Meeting, 2017

Presentation information

Oral presentation

3 Optics and Photonics » 3.9 Terahertz technologies

[14p-211-1~17] 3.9 Terahertz technologies

Tue. Mar 14, 2017 1:30 PM - 6:15 PM 211 (211)

Masaaki Tsubouchi(JAEA), Eiichi Matsubara(Osaka Dental Univ.), Safumi Suzuki(Titech)

5:45 PM - 6:00 PM

[14p-211-16] Sensing a single atom in a single Ce@C82 endohedral metallofullerene by terahertz radiation

〇(DC)Shaoqing Du1, Ya Zhang1, Kenji Yoshida1, Kazuhiko Hirakawa1,2 (1.IIS UTokyo, 2.INQIE UTokyo)

Keywords:Terahertz spectroscopy, single molecule, single atom

Endohedral metallofullerenes (fullerene molecules with an encapsulated metal atom) have been attracting wide interest not only in physics/chemistry but also in interdisciplinary areas such as materials science, biological science, and quantum information processing. Due to limitations in the conventional measurements, it has not been clear how the metal atom behaves in the single carbon cage. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically investigate single-atom dynamics in the single endohedral metallofullerene molecules.
In this work, we have successfully detected single-atom motion by measuring THz induced photocurrent spectra of single-Ce@C82 molecules. We used a single molecule transistor (SMT) structure that consisted of a single Ce@C82 molecule and the nanogap metal electrodes as a sensitive THz detector and detected weak absorption as a photocurrent induced in the SMT. By measuring THz-induced photocurrent spectra of single molecules, we observed two vibrational modes due to the ultrafast motion of single atom.