Toward molecular spintronics: synthesis of new magnetic conductors and high spin molecules

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Magnets are ever-present in our society and have shaped the technological development of our culture. There are literally thousands of applications of magnetic materials: They are found in motors and generators (an automobile engine contains over 20 magnets), in medical devices (such as MRI technology) and implants, in telecommunication and radar technology and we use magnetic materials to store our data on our computer hard drives. We are interested in the preparation of new molecular magnetic materials. These are different from the magnets most people are familiar with, like iron oxide or nickel. We propose to make extremely small magnets-on the scale of single molecules. As chemists we study the structure and properties of matter: we are also engaged in the preparation of new matter by a process called chemical synthesis. Most traditional magnets have properties that make the manipulation of their structure very difficult or impossible. On the other hand, synthetic chemists are able to alter molecular structures. If we can build magnets based on molecular precursors, we have the opportunity to tune the properties of our materials with our synthetic manipulations. In this way, we can create magnets with unprecedented properties: Liquid magnets or plastic magnets are just a couple of the many exciting possibilities. In fact, we hope to use these materials for future applications in magnetic data storage media or as new sensory devices. We expect our materials to tremendously increase computer data storage capacities and processor speeds in the future, in addition to a number of other exciting applications.