A Different Strategy for the Production of Molecule-Based Nanomagnets

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program supports research by Professor Gordon Yee of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to construct a new structural motif for single molecule magnets involving monodisperse high spin molecular squares in cubes and related structures with transition metal ions at the vertices and radical anionic ligand bridging edges. Subsequent tuning of the anisotropy by judicious selection of the transition metal is proposed to achieve the desired well-defined nanoscopic single molecule magnets. Examination of these nanomagnets may provide additional insight into the physics, such as quantum tunneling, of small superparamagnetic particles of well-defined size and composition. A unique aspect of this work is species with cis radical ligands that will serve as corner synthons for the preparation of various structures, so that both ligands and metal ions will have spin attributes. This research is to make families of related, well-defined, tunable, magnets in the form of molecular squares, cubes and clusters, which hold potential for magnetic memory devices at the molecular level. .