Organic radicals on surfaces: towards molecular spintronics

The novel and exciting field of molecular spintronics has recently attracted a great deal of interest and promising results have already been reported. The utilisation of organic radicals that could favour spin polarisation and conservation during transport offers new possibilities; however, first a fundamental investigation of these materials, especially those deposited on surfaces, is required. Here we highlight our recent results regarding the functionalisation of surfaces with polychlorotriphenylmethyl (PTM) radicals following five different strategies in which interactions of different nature are involved (i.e. van der Waals, electrostatic, coordination bond and covalent bond). In all cases, it was proved that the magnetic character of the molecule persists on the surface.