Generating electron spin qubit in metal-organic frameworks via spontaneous hydrolysis

Qubit,as the basic unit of quantum operations,has at least two quantum states for superposition.Diamond itself has no superimposable quantum states,but after injecting N atoms,the resulted nitrogenvacancy centers form excellent-performance qubits.For the same purpose,we can also obtain qubits by modifying the matrix without effective quantum states.HKUST-1({Cu_(3)(BTC)_(2)(H_(2)O)_(3)},BTC=1,3,5-benzene-tricarboxylate)with S=0 ground state is electron paramagnetic resonance(EPR)silent,so it is not a qubit candidate.However,the spontaneously hydrolyzed HKUST-1 produces dilute uncoupled Cu^(Ⅱ)ions with S=1/2.In this paper,we utilized the hydrolysis products of HKUST-1 to obtain qubits and assembled a core-shell structural HKUST-1@ZIF-8 by ZIF-8({Zn(mim)_(2)},mim=2-methylimidazole)coated over HKUST-1 for controlling the hydrolysis.The experimental results clearly show that the qubits come from hydrolyzed Cu^(Ⅱ)ions.Furthermore,the dilute uncoupled Cu^(Ⅱ)ions in this assembly can effectively reduce the decoherence of qubits.The EPR studies show that the T_(2) of this compound is 1067 ns at 10 K.