title: Single-molecule sensing using carbon nanotubes decorated with magnetic clusters.
abstract: First-principles and nonequilibrium Green's function techniques are used to investigate magnetism and spin-polarized quantum transport in metallic carbon nanotubes (CNT) decorated with transition metal (Ni(13), Pt(13)) magnetic nanoclusters (NC). For small cluster sizes, the strong CNT-NC interaction induces spin-polarization in the CNT. The adsorption of a benzene molecule is found to drastically modify the CNT-NC magnetization. Such a magnetization change should be large enough to be detected via magnetic-AFM or SQUID magnetometry, hence suggesting a novel approach for single-molecule gas detection.
authors.affiliation: Physique Théorique des Matériaux, Université de Liège, B-4000 Sart Tilman, Belgium. zeilazanolli@gmail.com
authors.forename: Zeila
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zanolli
authors.forename: J-C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Charlier