Lanthanide Single-molecule Magnets: Synthetic Strategy, Structures, Properties and Recent Advances

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Chemistry
• Physics

Background:

• Single-molecule magnets (SMMs) are crucial for advanced technologies like quantum computing and data storage.
• Lanthanide (Ln) SMMs offer large magnetic moments and anisotropy, but high performance remains challenging.
• Research on Ln SMMs with varying nuclearities is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To summarize design strategies and metal skeleton types for constructing Ln SMMs.
• To review reported mononuclear, dinuclear, and multinuclear Ln SMMs and their properties.
• To highlight low-nuclearity Ln SMMs, particularly single-ion magnets (SIMs), for structure-property correlation.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of reported Ln SMMs.
• Analysis of design strategies and metal skeleton types.
• Compilation and description of SMM properties (Ueff, τ0) for various nuclearities.

Main Results:

• Categorization of Ln SMMs by nuclearity (mono-, di-, multi-nuclear).
• Detailed description of magnetic properties, including energy barrier and pre-exponential factor.
• Emphasis on structure-property relationships in low-nuclearity Ln SMMs.

Conclusions:

• Low-nuclearity Ln SMMs, especially SIMs, are key to understanding fundamental magnetic behavior.
• This review provides insights for developing next-generation high-performance Ln SMMs.
• Further research on diverse Ln SMMs is needed to unlock their full potential.