Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Magnetic Materials Based on Coordination Chemistry

Dear Colleagues,

The field of Molecular Magnetism was introduced in the early 1980s as a multidisciplinary area of study associated with the magnetic properties of discrete molecules. Coordination chemistry played a crucial role in the evolution of the field since synthetic chemists were able to provide a wide variety of model systems spanning from monometallic and oligonuclear metal complexes to extended structures of multiple dimensionalities. The study of these systems revealed the presence of novel magnetic phenomena and allowed a deeper understanding of the magnetic properties at a molecular level via magneto-structural correlations and theoretical modeling. For example, the observation of magnetic hysteresis in a discrete manganese cluster, Mn12OAc, paved the way for developing a new area of research called single-molecule magnets (SMMs). SMMs are species that can exhibit slow magnetic relaxation, below a characteristic blocking temperature (T_B), due to a molecular origin. Thus, SMMs can exhibit the properties of bulk magnets such as SmCo₅ but at the molecular level and, more importantly, they could show quantum features and find technological applications in quantum computing, spintronics, and high-density memory storage devices. Synthetic efforts in this field have produced a large number of SMMs based on transition metals and/or lanthanide ions with blocking temperatures approaching liquid nitrogen temperature. This Special Issue on “Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Magnetic Materials based on Coordination Chemistry” should become a timely status report summarizing progress in recent years.

Dr. Dimitris I. Alexandropoulos
Dr. Kuduva R. Vignesh
Dr. Despina Dermitzaki
Guest Editors

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