Luminescence-Driven Electronic Structure Determination in a Textbook Dimeric DyIII -Based Single-Molecule Magnet.

A textbook dysprosium dinuclear complex based on acetylacetone ligands, [Dy2 (acac)4 (µ2 -acac)2 (H2 O)2 ], has been synthesized and fully characterized. This simple dimeric lanthanide complex shows well-resolved solid-state luminescence and behaves as a single-molecule magnet under zero DC field. A seminal crystal-field approach is used to marry both magnetism and luminescence in the frame of an energetic picture.

Tetrathiafulvalene-Based Helicene Ligand in the Design of a Dysprosium Field-Induced Single-Molecule Magnet.

The design of a coordination complex that involves a ligand combining both a tetrathiafulvalene core and a helicene fragment was achieved thanks to the reaction between the new 2-{1-[2-methyl[6]helicene]-4,5-[4,5-bis(propylthio)tetrathiafulvalenyl]-1 H-benzimidazol-2-yl}pyridine ligand (L) and the Dy(hfac)3·2H2O metalloprecursor. Magnetic investigations showed field-induced single-molecule-magnet (SMM) behavior under an applied magnetic field of 1000 Oe for [Dy(hfac)3(L)]·0.5CH2Cl2, while experimentally oriented single-crystal magnetic measurements allowed for determination of the magnetic anisotropy orientation. The magnetic behavior was rationalized through ab initio CASSCF/SI-SO calculations. This redox-active chiral-field-induced SMM paves the way for the design of switchable-multiproperty SMMs.

A Dy4 Cubane: A New Member in the Single-Molecule Toroics Family.

Molecular materials that possess a toroidal moment associated to a non-magnetic ground state are known as single-molecule toroics (SMTs) and are usually planar molecules. Herein, we report a Dy4 cubane, namely [Dy4 (Bppd)4 (µ3 -OH)4 (Pa)4 (H2 O)4 ]⋅0.333 H2 O (where BppdH=1,3-Bis(pyridin-4-yl)propane-1,3-dione and PaH=2-Picolinic acid) for which magnetometry measurements and state-of-art ab initio calculations highlight SMT behavior in a tridimensional structure (3D-SMT). The in-depth theoretical analysis on the resulting low-lying energy states, along with their variation in function of the magnetic exchange pathways, allows further light to be shed on the description of single-molecule toroics and identify the coupling scheme that better reproduces the observed data.

The disclosure of mesoscale behaviour of a 3d-SMM monolayer on Au(111) through a multilevel approach.

Here we present a computational study of a full- and a half-monolayer of a Fe4 single molecule magnet ([Fe4(L)2(dpm)6], where H3L = 2-hydroxymethyl-2-phenylpropane-1,3-diol and Hdpm = dipivaloylmethane, Fe4Ph) on an unreconstructed surface of Au(111). This has been possible through the application of an integrated approach, which allows the explicit inclusion of the packing effects in the classical dynamics to be used in a second step in periodic and non-periodic high level DFT calculations. In this way we can obtain access to mesoscale geometrical data and verify how they can influence the magnetic properties of interest of the single Fe4 molecule. The proposed approach allows to overcome the ab initio state-of-the-art approaches used to study Single Molecule Magnets (SMMs), which are based on the study of one single adsorbed molecule and cannot represent effects on the scale of a monolayer. Indeed, we show here that it is possible to go beyond the computational limitations inherent to the use, for such complex systems, of accurate calculation techniques (e.g. ab initio molecular dynamics) without losing the level of accuracy necessary to gain new detailed insights, hardly reachable at the experimental level. Indeed, long-range and edge effects on the Fe4 structures and their easy axis of magnetization orientations have been evidenced as their different contributions to the overall macroscopic behavior.

Magnetic Slow Relaxation in a Metal-Organic Framework Made of Chains of Ferromagnetically Coupled Single-Molecule Magnets.

We report the study of a Dy-based metal-organic framework (MOF) with unprecedented magnetic properties. The compound is made of nine-coordinated DyIII magnetic building blocks (MBBs) with poor intrinsic single-molecule magnet behavior. However, the MOF architecture constrains the MBBs in a one-dimensional structure that induces a ferromagnetic coupling between them. Overall, the material shows a magnetic slow relaxation in absence of external static field and a hysteretic behavior at 0.5 K. Low-temperature magnetic studies, diamagnetic doping, and ab initio calculations highlight the crucial role played by the Dy-Dy ferromagnetic interaction. Overall, we report an original magnetic object at the frontier between single-chain magnets and single-molecule magnets that host intrachain couplings that cancel quantum tunneling between the MBBs. This compound is evidence that a bottom-up approach through MOF design can induce spontaneous organization of MBBs able to produce remarkable molecular magnetic materials.

Highly Axial Magnetic Anisotropy in a N3 O5 Dysprosium(III) Coordination Environment Generated by a Merocyanine Ligand.

A spiropyran-based switchable ligand isomerizes upon reaction with lanthanide(III) precursors to generate complexes with an unusual N3 O5 coordination sphere. The air-stable dysprosium(III) complex shows a hysteresis loop at 2 K and a very strong axial magnetic anisotropy generated by the merocyanine phenolate donor.