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Updated: May 20, 2026

Stable Aqueous Suspensions of Manganese Ferrite Clusters with Tunable Nanoscale Dimension and Composition
Published on: February 5, 2022
Molecular [(Fe3)–(Fe3)] and [(Fe4)–(Fe4)] coordination cluster pairs as single or composite arrays
E Carolina Sañudo1, Jorge Salinas Uber, Alba Pons Balagué
1Departament de Química Inorgànica, Facultat de Química, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. esanudo@ub.edu
Abstract:
The synthesis of molecular cluster pairs is a challenge for coordination chemists due to the potential applications of these species in molecular spintronics or quantum computing. The ligand H(4)L, 1,3-bis-(3-oxo-3-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-propionyl)-2-methoxybenzene, has been successfully used to obtain a series of such complexes using the basic Fe(III) trinuclear carboxylates as starting materials. Synthetic control has allowed the isolation of the two molecular cluster pairs that form the composite [Fe(4)O(2)(PhCO(2))(6)(H(2)L)(pz)](2)[Fe(3)O(PhCO(2))(5)(py)(H(2)L)](2) (1). The dimers of trinuclear units, [Fe(3)O(PhCO(2))(5)(H(2)O)(H(2)L)](2) (2) and [Fe(3)O(o-MePhCO(2))(5)(H(2)L)(py)](2) (3), and the dimers of tetranuclear units, [Fe(4)O(2)(PhCO(2))(6)(H(2)L)(pz)](2) (4) and [Fe(4)O(2)(o-MePhCO(2))(6)(H(2)L)(pz)](2) (5), are presented here. The magnetic properties of the reported aggregates show that they are pairs of semi-independent clusters weakly interacting magnetically as required for two-qubit quantum gates.
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