In a recent study, Manish Garg, independent group leader at Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (MPI FKF), succeeded in probing the local properties of bright and dark excitons in the organic superconductor copper naphthalocyanine (CuNc). The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

This study was the result of the efforts of an international collaboration that brought together the MPI for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, the Università della Calabria and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

By combining scanning tunneling microscopy with wave-packet interferometry, the authors gained remarkable—and previously inaccessible—insights into exciton dynamics. The insights gained with this technique can be of paramount importance both in the field of energy materials—where excitons play a central role in light-harvesting technologies such as solar cells—and in quantum technologies, as excitons are considered a promising platform for quantum computing.