Trinuclear rare earth pyridyl-β-diketonate complexes: developing new methods towards finding lost toroidal spin...

Area of Science:

• Coordination Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Magnetochemistry

Background:

• Rare earth (RE) triangles are investigated for their potential as single molecular toroics (SMTs).
• Understanding low-energy excitations in these molecules is crucial for developing molecular magnetic materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To synthesize novel RE triangles using β-diketonate ligands.
• To investigate the low-energy excitations and toroic properties of these complexes using inelastic neutron scattering (INS).

Main Methods:

• Synthesis of rare earth triangle complexes using β-diketonate ligands.
• Characterization using X-ray diffraction and conventional magnetometry.
• Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) experiments to probe low-energy excitations.

Main Results:

• Several new RE triangle complexes were synthesized, including examples with varying ancillary ligands.
• Conventional magnetometry did not reveal a non-magnetic SMT ground state.
• INS experiments on complexes 1 and a related SMT showed a broad Lorentzian peak close to the calculated energy gap, suggesting toroic properties.

Conclusions:

• The study presents new RE triangle complexes with potential toroic behavior.
• Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) shows promise as a spectroscopic tool for validating complexes with toroic ground states.
• The findings contribute to the understanding of low-energy excitations in molecular toroics.