Opening Magnetic Hysteresis by Axial Ferromagnetic Coupling: From Mono-Decker to Double-Decker Metallacrown.

ABSTRACT

Combining Ising-type magnetic anisotropy with collinear magnetic interactions in single-molecule magnets (SMMs) is a significant synthetic challenge. Herein we report a Dy[15-MCCu -5] (1-Dy) SMM, where a DyIII ion is held in a central pseudo-D5h pocket of a rigid and planar Cu5 metallacrown (MC). Linking two Dy[15-MCCu -5] units with a single hydroxide bridge yields the double-decker {Dy[15-MCCu -5]}2 (2-Dy) SMM where the anisotropy axes of the two DyIII ions are nearly collinear, resulting in magnetic relaxation times for 2-Dy that are approximately 200 000 times slower at 2 K than for 1-Dy in zero external field. Whereas 1-Dy and the YIII -diluted Dy@2-Y analogue do not show remanence in magnetic hysteresis experiments, the hysteresis data for 2-Dy remain open up to 6 K without a sudden drop at zero field. In conjunction with theoretical calculations, these results demonstrate that the axial ferromagnetic Dy-Dy coupling suppresses fast quantum tunneling of magnetization (QTM). The relaxation profiles of both complexes curiously exhibit three distinct exponential regimes, and hold the largest effective energy barriers for any reported d-f SMMs up to 625 cm-1 .