Achievement

The 2012 Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award was presented to Alexander Ako Khajetoorians (Hamburg University) for his presentation “Exploring quantum magnetism at the single atom level”, based on research he began at The University of Texas as a funded trainee. With the development of sub-Kelvin high-magnetic field STM, two complementary methods, namely spin-polarized scanning tunneling spectroscopy (SP-STS) [1] and inelastic STS (ISTS) [2-3], can address single spins at the atomic scale. While SP-STS reads out the projection of the impurity magnetization, ISTS detects the excitations of this magnetization as a function of an external magnetic field. They are thus the analogs of magnetometry and spin resonance measurements pushed to the single atom limit. He showed how single atom magnetometry can be combined with an atom-by-atom bottom-up fabrication to realize complex atomic-scale magnets with tailored properties as well as all-spin based atomic-scale technology.