Development of a high sensitivity magneto-optical Kerr effect apparatus for study of spin crossover molecules

Molecular based electronic devices demonstrate promising applications in material science research. Spin crossover molecules exhibit binary stability between high spin and low spin states and the transition between two states can be controlled using different stimuli such as temperature, pressure and light. Recently the electric field manipulation of spin states in spin cross over molecules has attracted much interest in molecular spintronics. The magneto optical Kerr effect (MOKE) shows the interaction of light with magnetic materials and that the photon polarization rotation is proportional to the magnetic moment of the sample. The study of spin crossover molecules using a MOKE apparatus is advantageous due to the surface sensitivity. We have developed a homebuilt MOKE device in order to study the magnetic field effect on spin crossover transition temperature. During the development, computation skill were used to optimize our design. Both the instrumentation development and experimental data on spin crossover molecules will be presented.