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Updated: Apr 23, 2026
Hyperspectral Imaging as a Tool to Study Optical Anisotropy in Lanthanide-Based Molecular Single Crystals
Published on: April 14, 2020
Most spin-1/2 transition-metal ions do have single ion anisotropy
Jia Liu1, Hyun-Joo Koo2, Hongjun Xiang3
1Department of Chemistry, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA.
Abstract:
The cause for the preferred spin orientation in magnetic systems containing spin-1/2 transition-metal ions was explored by studying the origin of the easy-plane anisotropy of the spin-1/2 Cu(2+) ions in CuCl2·2H2O, LiCuVO4, CuCl2, and CuBr2 on the basis of density functional theory and magnetic dipole-dipole energy calculations as well as a perturbation theory treatment of the spin-orbit coupling. We find that the spin orientation observed for these spin-1/2 ions is not caused by their anisotropic spin exchange interactions, nor by their magnetic dipole-dipole interactions, but by the spin-orbit coupling associated with their crystal-field split d-states. Our study also predicts in-plane anisotropy for the Cu(2+) ions of Bi2CuO4 and Li2CuO2. The results of our investigations dispel the mistaken belief that magnetic systems with spin-1/2 ions have no magnetic anisotropy induced by spin-orbit coupling.
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