Shwetabh Gupta

PhD thesis: TBC

The Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) effect entails an unexpectedly strong coupling between electron spins and chiral organic structures, greatly exceeding conventional predictions. Despite being extensively observed across diverse molecular systems, a comprehensive theoretical framework of CISS remains elusive. In my project, I aim to investigate the CISS effect within bulk organic semiconductor heterostructures, diverging from the prevailing focus on single-molecule junctions.

Employing these heterostructures enables, for the first time, explorations of correlations between optical characteristics and spin selectivity, as well as removing the direct metal-molecule contacts and customising the heterostructure parameters. Ergo, I intend to add multiple degrees of experimental freedom onto current CISS literature, hopefully illuminating details about its underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, these CISS-based semiconductors can be directly implemented into spintronic and magnetoresistance devices for immediate next-generation commercial applications.

Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?

My interest in the CISS effect began during my master’s project within the same research group at Cambridge. Its puzzling reproducibility across a variety of different chiral molecules—ranging from DNA and proteins to helicine—and different experimental setups, combined with a lack of an agreed model to explain these results, sparked my focused drive to unravel the fundamental origins of the effect.