Low-Dimensional Molecular Magnets and Spintronics

Abstract

Molecular spintronics, which combines spintronics and molecular electronics, is an emerging field of research. Low-dimensional molecular magnets such as single molecule magnets (SMMs) and single chain magnets (SCMs) can potentially be used as spin carriers in spintronic devices, and hence have attracted considerable interest. By using different bridging ligands, a number of L.-M. Zheng (*) • M. Ren School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China e-mail: lmzheng@nju.edu.cn J. Tang State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, People’s Republic of China e-mail: tang@ciac.ac.cn H.-L. Sun Department of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Y. Xu et al. (eds.), Handbook of Spintronics, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6892-5_26 617 compounds showing SMM or SCM behaviors have been reported. This review article covers the following aspects: (1) SMMs based on the oxo-bridged transition metal clusters with the main focus on the Mn-O and Fe-O clusters; (2) SMMs based on single metal (lanthanide, actinide, transition metal) ions as well as polynuclear lanthanide clusters; (3) single chain magnets; and (4) recent development of spintronics based on SMMs such as molecular spin transistors and spin valves.