The design and synthesis of model compounds that do not exist naturally is one of the important targets in modern coordination chemistry. Herein, an eighteen-membered honeycomb structure with equal numbers of MnII (s=5/2) and GdIII (s=7/2) metal centers has been prepared, for the first time, by using a hydrophobic force-directed self-assembling process. Due to the weakly coupled GdIII pairs, the magnetic properties are mainly determined by eight-membered chains in the experimentally considered temperature range. These [Mn4 Gd4 ] "finite-size" chains, albeit with large Hilbert space, can be fully resolved by the high-temperature series expansion and the powerful finite-temperature Lanczos method, which reveal that the exchange-couplings between the metal centers are antiferromagnetic and consistent with the magnetization measurement. Interestingly, from the surface-engineering point of view, the [Mn4 Gd4 ] chains are "precisely" assembled into a 2D honeycomb pattern, which is potentially desirable in the design of weakly coupled qubits.
Keywords: classical spins; eighteen-membered lattice; honeycomb lattice; self assembly; two-dimensional.
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