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Updated: Aug 4, 2026

Spatial Separation of Molecular Conformers and Clusters
Published on: January 9, 2014
Optical determination of the single-ion zero-field splitting in large spin clusters
David Collison1, Vasily S Oganesyan, Stergios Piligkos
1Department of Chemistry, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Abstract:
The dodecametallic Cr(III) cluster has an S = 6 ground state with an axial zero-field splitting (ZFS) of DS=6 = +0.088 cm-1. Analysis of high-resolution optical data (MCD) allows us to determine the single-ion ZFS of the constituent Cr(III) ions directly (D = -1.035 cm-1). A vector coupling analysis demonstrates that the cluster ZFS is almost entirely single-ion in origin. Thus, the relative orientations of the local and cluster magnetic axes can lead to cluster ZFS of opposite sign to the single-ion even when this is the only significant contribution.
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