Peroxide-Templated Assembly of a Trimetal Neodymium Complex Single-Molecule Magnet

Inorg Chem. 2020 Aug 3;59(15):10379-10383. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c00234. Epub 2020 Jul 13.

Abstract

In this work, we present a trimetal neodymium complex with two notable qualities. First, the assembly of the complex is templated by peroxide derived from atmospheric oxygen. Second, the bulk material behaves as a superparamagnet, implying that the individual complexes are molecular magnets. Peroxide-templated assembly is possible because of the confluence of the high oxophilicity of neodymium along with the use of an azeotropic distillation synthesis method, which excludes water but admits oxygen. SQUID magnetometry measurements show an extremely high magnetic susceptibility as well as a lack of remanence.