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Updated: May 9, 2026

Magnetometric Characterization of Intermediates in the Solid-State Electrochemistry of Redox-Active Metal-Organic Frameworks
Published on: June 9, 2023
Single-ion magnetic anisotropy and isotropic magnetic couplings in the metal-organic framework Fe2(dobdc)
Rémi Maurice1, Pragya Verma, Joseph M Zadrozny
1Department of Chemistry, Supercomputing Institute, and Chemical Theory Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, United States.
Abstract:
The metal-organic framework Fe2(dobdc) (dobdc(4-) = 2,5-dioxido-1,4-benzenedicarboxylate), often referred to as Fe-MOF-74, possesses many interesting properties such as a high selectivity in olefin/paraffin separations. This compound contains open-shell Fe(II) ions with open coordination sites which may have large single-ion magnetic anisotropies, as well as isotropic couplings between the nearest and next nearest neighbor magnetic sites. To complement a previous analysis of experimental data made by considering only isotropic couplings [Bloch et al. Science 2012, 335, 1606], the magnitude of the main magnetic interactions are here assessed with quantum chemical calculations performed on a finite size cluster. It is shown that the single-ion anisotropy is governed by same-spin spin-orbit interactions (i.e., weak crystal-field regime), and that this effect is not negligible compared to the nearest neighbor isotropic couplings. Additional magnetic data reveal a metamagnetic behavior at low temperature. This effect can be attributed to various microscopic interactions, and the most probable scenarios are discussed.
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