Scientists read electron spins with light inside porous crystals — a step toward a 'quantum nose'

Sam Bayliss and Alistair Inglis at the University of Glasgow, working with colleagues in Tokyo, Sheffield, and Kobe, have done something never achieved before: reading the magnetic spin of electrons trapped inside a metal-organic framework — a rigid, sponge-like crystal — using light. Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the technique could turn these designable materials into ultra-sensitive chemical sensors, each framework sniffing out different molecules from their quantum fingerprints.