High blocking temperatures for DyScS endohedral fullerene single-molecule magnets

Dy-based single-molecule magnets (SMMs) are of great interest due to their ability to exhibit very large thermal barriers to relaxation and therefore high blocking temperatures. One interesting line of investigation is Dy-encapsulating endohedral clusterfullerenes, in which a carbon cage protects magnetic Dy³⁺ ions against decoherence by environmental noise and allows for the stabilization of bonding and magnetic interactions that would be difficult to achieve in other molecular architectures. Recent studies of such materials have focused on clusters with two Dy atoms, since ferromagnetic exchange between Dy atoms is known to reduce the rate of magnetic relaxation via quantum tunneling. Here, two new dysprosium-containing mixed-metallic sulfide clusterfullerenes, DyScS@C _s(6)-C₈₂ and DyScS@C _3v(8)-C₈₂, have been successfully synthesized, isolated and characterized by mass spectrometry, Vis-NIR, cyclic voltammetry, single crystal X-ray diffractometry, and magnetic measurements. Crystallographic analyses show that the conformation of the encapsulated cluster inside the fullerene cages is notably different than in the Dy₂X@C _s(6)-C₈₂ and Dy₂X@C _3v(8)-C₈₂ (X = S, O) analogues. Remarkably, both isomers of DyScS@C₈₂ show open magnetic hysteresis and slow magnetic relaxation, even at zero field. Their magnetic blocking temperatures are around 7.3 K, which are among the highest values reported for clusterfullerene SMMs. The SMM properties of DyScS@C₈₂ far outperform those of the dilanthanide analogues Dy₂S@C₈₂, in contrast to the trend observed for carbide and nitride Dy clusterfullerenes.