Controlling the rotation of this molecule could lead to new technologies for microelectronics, quantum computing and more.

You can easily rotate a baseball in your hand by twisting your fingers. But you need inventive scientists with access to world-class scientific facilities to rotate an object that is only two billionths of a meter wide. That is a million times smaller than a raindrop.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory report they can precisely rotate a that small on demand. The key ingredient is a single atom of europium, a . It rests at the center of a complex of different atoms and gives the molecule many potential applications.

"We are able to rotate this europium complex by 60 or 120 degrees to the right or left," said Saw Wai Hla, physicist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne, and a physics professor at Ohio University. "The ability to control the motion of a rare earth complex such as this could impact a wide spectrum of technologies." That includes next generation microelectronics, quantum technologies, catalysis to speed up reactions, conversion of light into electricity and more.

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