Memristive properties of single-molecule magnets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how single-molecule magnets exhibit memristive behavior influenced by magnetic anisotropy, revealing a wide timescale separation that enables their use as molecular memory devices.

Contribution

It demonstrates the role of magnetic anisotropy in creating distinct relaxation timescales, leading to memristive effects in single-molecule magnets under varying bias voltages.

Findings

Magnetic anisotropy causes a separation of fast and slow relaxation times.

The system exhibits a partially capacitive response at short times.

Molecular spin can serve as a state variable for memory applications.

Abstract

Single-molecule magnets weakly coupled to two ferromagnetic leads act as memory devices in electronic circuits---their response depends on history, not just on the instantaneous applied voltage. We show that magnetic anisotropy introduces a wide separation of timescales between fast and slow relaxation processes in the system, which leads to a pronounced memory dependence in a wide intermediate time regime. We study the response to a harmonically varying bias voltage from slow to rapid driving within a master-equation approach. The system is not purely memristive but shows a partially capacitive response on short timescales. In the intermediate time regime the molecular spin can be used as the state variable in a two-terminal molecular memory device.