Monash University announced on 7 October 2026 that an international research team had used a microscope tip to change the quantum behaviour of an ultrathin material. The university describes the movement as an atomic-scale see-saw, with tiny structural shifts changing magnetic interactions with the metal underneath. The result gives researchers a way to examine and control those interactions, with any application in future electronics still at an early stage.
The material is a two-dimensional metal-organic framework, a network containing organic molecules and copper atoms. Its structure is slightly buckled, so different parts sit at different distances from the underlying surface. Moving that structure changes more than its shape: it changes how its local magnetic properties interact with mobile electrons below.
The published paper describes a framework on a silver surface and focuses on an interaction known as Kondo coupling. At low temperatures, local magnetic moments can interact with conduction electrons in the metal. The researchers report that vertically manipulating the framework lets them alter the strength of that coupling in a controlled, reversible way.
The see-saw comparison makes the movement easier to picture. As one part of the molecular structure moves closer to the surface, another moves further away. The significant result is that the team could move between configurations and observe corresponding changes in the interaction, rather than simply compare two separately prepared samples.
The research also has a longer history than this week’s announcement. The Small paper was first published on 5 October, while an earlier preprint was submitted in December 2025. That sequence separates the university’s new public explanation from the initial circulation of the research. The preprint and journal article are records of the same study, rather than independent reproductions.
The tool used in the experiment has an unusually close relationship with its sample. A scanning tunnelling microscope brings a sharp conducting tip very near a surface and measures a current across the tiny gap. IBM’s account of the instrument explains how changes in this tunnelling current can reveal atomic-scale structure.
The microscope can also manipulate what it is measuring. IBM researchers famously used the technique to position individual xenon atoms, illustrating a capability that extends beyond taking an image. In the Monash-led experiment, the tip served as a means of deliberately changing the framework’s structure and then examining the electronic response.
Lead author Benjamin Lowe said the first structural change was unexpected. “The first time we noticed the structural change, it was completely unintentional,” he said in Monash’s announcement. Lowe, a Monash PhD graduate now at the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics, described the subsequent discovery that the change could be reproduced.
The possible electronics connection lies in controlling magnetic behaviour. As an APS explainer describes, spintronics seeks to use electrons’ spin as well as their electrical charge for information processing or storage. Its discussion concerns a separate experiment, but explains why researchers are interested in gaining finer control over magnetic interactions.
The Monash-led result does not demonstrate a working processor, a memory product or an energy-saving device. It establishes a controllable laboratory system that could help researchers test how structure affects quantum behaviour. For the team, the next scientific value lies in using that control to investigate materials and interactions more precisely, before any commercial application can be assessed.
