2024 Mayer Scholarship Recipient

Posted in News Story

The Department of Physics is pleased to announce that DaVonne Henry is the recipient of the 2024 Professor Walter G. Mayer Endowed Scholarship, which supports a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in experimental physics.

Single-Molecule Magnets (SMMs) are a unique class of molecules that individually show magnetic anisotropy without the need for long range ordering. They show potential in applications for quantum computing and for data storage. One challenge for applications is the integration of SMMs in devices that can robustly read and write the molecular magnetic state. DaVonne’s work focuses on using graphene quantum dot devices as a platform for performing measurements on small samples of these molecules.

In his research, DaVonne has shown that hybrid devices of SMMs on graphene quantum dots show “jumps” in the electrical response that are attributed to magnetization switching of the molecules. The fabrication and measurement methods used show promise for a scalable measurement platform for a variety of magnetic molecules. Over the next year, DaVonne hopes to explore how these devices respond to external magnetic fields, and to study how doping affects the device performance by incorporating a gate electrode.