Since the molecular electronic spin emerged as one of the promising technologies to implement the quantum processing of information, coordination complexes of lanthanides and actinides have become protagonists as suitable molecular realizations of qubits and qugates. In this chapter, we revise the most recent developments on the production of rare earth (RE) based qubits, qugates and most recently qudits, which also make use of the nuclear spin degrees of freedom to encode and process quantum information. Essential concepts such as the spin relaxation and the phase memory times in these systems are described, as well as the development of multiqubit molecular systems for the realization of basic quantum gate operations. The most advanced achievements consisting on the realization of the Grover algorithm or the demonstration of a quantum error correction protocol constitute the culmination of this chapter, which concludes with the challenges yet lying ahead for implementing the molecular spin as an essential component of quantum computing.

Peer reviewed

Chapter 309.