Topological Engineering of a Frustrated Antiferromagnetic Triradical in Aza-Triangulene Architectures

Abstract

Open-shell nanographenes provide a versatile platform to host unconventional magnetic states within their {\pi}-conjugated networks. Particularly appealing are graphene architectures that incorporate spatially separated radicals and tunable interactions, offering a scalable route toward spin-based quantum architectures. Triangulenes are ideal for this purpose, as their radical count scales with size, although strong hybridization prevents individual spin control. Here, we realize a radical reconfiguration strategy that transforms a single-radical aza-triangulene into a frustrated antiferromagnetic triradical by covalently extending it with armchair anthene moieties of increasing length. Scanning tunnelling spectroscopy reveals edge-localized Kondo resonances and a doublet-to-quartet spin excitation, evidencing the emergence of correlated spins. Multi-reference electronic-structure calculations trace the progressive increase in polyradical character with anthene length, driven by the clustering of frontier states within a narrow energy window. Consequently, the initial single-radical doublet reorganizes into a frustrated triradical with weakly coupled edge spins, a molecular analog of a three-qubit quantum register.