Author Archive

Single Molecule Magnets in 2D

Single Molecule Magnets (SMMs) are transition metal clusters that show superparamagnetic behavior below the blocking temperature. The advantage of SMMs over other traditional magnets is that they can be soluble in organic solvents, can form crystalline structures and have a uniform size. It is also possible to modify their magnetic properties by altering the organic ligands surrounding the transition metal clusters. SMMs have potential applications in quantum computing and information storage.

Giannis Papaefstathiou et al have synthesized two new coordination polymers. They are both built from [Mn6] clusters and trimesate anions. However beacuase the base reaction blend is sensitive to reaction conditions, two different complexes were formed. The first coordination polymer is a 2D non-regular net which is held together by dative and hydrogen bonds. The second coordination polymer has a 2D regular structure and is held together only by dative bonds. Although different in structure, both polymers contain [Mn6] SMMs with S=4 ground states. Experiments have shown that there are both antiferromagentic and ferromagnetic interactions between the manganese ions.


To find out more read the
Daltons Transactions full paper
Two-dimensional frameworks built from Single-Molecule Magnets
Athanassios D. Katsenis, Ross Inglis, Alessandro Prescimone, Euan K. Brechin and Giannis S. Papaefstathiou
CrystEngComm, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06536C

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Catalytic MOFs in a Click!

Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) have received a great deal of attention over the past fifteen years and have proved applicable in a variety of areas including gas storage, catalysis, gas purification and drug delivery. For catalysis, MOFs have been reported that can catalyze a range of organic transformations. By modifying the internal structure of  MOFs that allow them to interact with guest species, their chemical reactivity can be fine tuned.

In this article Marie Savonnet et al. have post synthetically modified MOFs by using “click chemistry” for application in base catalysis. Basic catalyltic amino centres and lipophillic phenyl groups were successfully introduced into the  DMOF parent structure. These new functionalized MOFs are able to catalyse the transesterification of ethyldecanoate in methanol with good performance. The substrates were co-adsorbed into the MOF structure and from the presence of basic amino groups in the internal MOF structure, methanol can be activated for nucleophillic attack of the ethyldecanoate carbonyl group. This paper demonstrates that through rational design, MOF catalysts can be engineered with appropriate pore size and functionalities for a particular application.

To find out more about this Dalton Transactions Hot Article read the full paper

Tailoring metal-organic framework catalysts by click chemistry
Marie Savonnet, Aurélie Camarata, Jerome Canivet, Delphine Bazer-Bachi, Nicolas Bats, Vincent Lecocq, Catherine Pinel and David Farrusseng
Dalton Trans., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2DT11994C

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