Debut of five new nanomagnetic compounds
A wealth of advanced devices and instrumentation with applications in fields including consumer electronics, biomedicine and manufacturing rely on magnetic materials to do their jobs. Now, the single molecule magnets (SMMs) at the frontiers of discovery could have exciting application in information storage, quantum computing, molecular spintronics and biomedicine. SMMs display sluggish magnetisation relaxation phenomena reflecting high energy barriers to magnetisation reversal. Magnetisation stability at room temperature is important for data storage and processing. EU-funded scientists set out to produce SMMs with record energy barrier value supported by EU funding of the project 'Molecular nanomagnets based on rhenium(IV) and manganese(III)' (MONARHEMAN). No compound consisting of these two ions has ever been reported until now. MONARHEMAN prepared and characterised five members of a new family of compounds with these metal ions. Adding rhenium(IV) as a rhenium chloride complex to cationic manganese complexes yielded two compounds with an increase in energy barrier by almost a third. One of the five compounds is the first salt ever reported in which both cation and anion are nanomagnets. Three of them are the first complexes made of these two ions that show SMM behaviour. Finally, all these compounds were produced despite the significant associated technical difficulties. The rhenium(IV) ion tends to be unstable in the presence of oxygen (-O2)-containing groups. Scientists have now produced the first such systems of rhenium(IV)-containing compounds including associated -O2 groups. Scientists have provided five important new model systems to foster discovery related to SMMs. The MONARHEMAN project has made an outstanding contribution to the emerging field of nanomagnetisation phenomena certain to lead to exciting new devices and systems.
