When a crystalline material is being developed for large-scale
applications, the question arises: what if the material isn’t a
perfect crystal? This is a particularly relevant issue for
crystals of molecular magnets—molecules that carry a large
spin—as they have been touted as potential quantum information
storage systems. In a paper appearing in Physical Review B,
Chiara Carbonera and colleagues at the Instituto de Ciencia de
Materiales de Aragón (CSIC-U. Zaragoza) in Spain, in
collaboration with scientists at several institutions in Europe,
present a careful study of the role of disorder on quantum
tunneling in single-molecule magnet crystals. Quantum tunneling
is the field-induced tunneling of molecular spins from one
quantum state to the other, a process that could provide a way
of storing information in the crystal. Carbonera et al. focus on
a crystal of benzoate, which is one of the most widely studied
of the molecular magnets. The group took care to prepare their
crystals without solvent molecules, kno