A stable and strongly ferromagnetic Fe17O10- cluster with an accordion-like structure

Lijun Geng; Xiaohu Yu; Zhixun Luo

doi:10.1038/s42004-023-00952-z

A stable and strongly ferromagnetic Fe₁₇O₁₀^- cluster with an accordion-like structure

Commun Chem. 2023 Jul 13;6(1):149. doi: 10.1038/s42004-023-00952-z.

Authors

Lijun Geng¹, Xiaohu Yu², Zhixun Luo^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
² Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Catalysis, School of Chemical & Environment Sciences, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, 723000, China. yuxiaohu950203@126.com.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. zxluo@iccas.ac.cn.
⁴ School of Chemistry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, P.R. China. zxluo@iccas.ac.cn.

Abstract

Isolated clusters are ideal systems for tailoring molecule-based magnets and investigating the evolution of magnetic order from microscopic to macroscopic regime. We have prepared pure Fe_n^- (n = 7-31) clusters and observed their gas-collisional reactions with oxygen in a flow tube reactor. Interestingly, only the larger Fe_n^- (n ≥ 15) clusters support the observation of O₂-intake, while the smaller clusters Fe_n^- (n = 7-14) are nearly nonreactive. What is more interesting is that Fe₁₇O₁₀^- shows up with prominent abundance in the mass spectra indicative of its distinct inertness. In combination with DFT calculations, we unveil the stability of Fe₁₇O₁₀^- within an interesting acordion-like structure and elucidate the spin accommodation in such a strongly ferromagnetic iron cluster oxide.

Abstract

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