of Single-Chain Magnets

Single Chains Magnets (SCM) are the rebellious cousins of Single-Molecule Magnets (SMM). Their synthesis and most of all their organization in a crystal lattice are hardly controllable. A team from Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes (CNRS / Université de Rennes 1 / École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes / INSA Rennes) and from the University of Florence (Italy) managed to produce chiral supramolecular nanotubes of single-chain magnets in which the magnetic behavior of each chain is preserved.

Molecular magnetism deals with the study of nanoscopic magnetic properties of matter. Single-Molecules Magnets (SMM) are the superstars of this field because of their ability to behave as magnets at the nanoscopic scale. However, their driving magnetic mechanisms are hardly predictable and hard to control in extended structures.

Chemists have thus developed one dimensional analogues of SMM: the Single-Chain Magnets (SCM). These compounds have much more robust magnetic properties but their synthesis is rather tricky and their organization in a crystal lattice almost uncontrollable.

By using radical magnetic ligands with long alkyl chains, it has been able to favor the macroscopic organization of these chains and to obtain chiral supramolecular nanotubes of single-chain magnets. These nanotubes are 4.5nm wide and are made of 11 chains wound around each other. The main asset of these edifices, aside from their beauty, is that the magnetic behavior of each of its constitutive chains is preserved and that there are also chiral.

These results pave the way toward the observation of magneto- or electro-chiral effects on crystal of SCM but also to nanofluidic transport properties in fluorinated nanopores.

Reference :

F. Houard, Q. Evrard, G. Calvez, Y. Suffren, C. Daiguebonne, O. Guillou, F. Gendron, B. Le Guennic, T. Guizouarn, V. Dorcet, M. Mannini, K. Bernot. Chiral supramolecular nanotubes of single‐chain magnets. Angew. Chem. Int.  Ed. – Novembre 2019 10.1002/anie.201913019