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

磁铁在我们的社会中无处不在，并塑造了我们文化的技术发展。从字面上讲，磁性材料有成千上万的应用：它们存在于电机和发电机(一个汽车发动机包含20多个磁铁)、医疗设备(如核磁共振技术)和植入物、电信和雷达技术中，我们使用磁性材料将数据存储在计算机硬盘上。我们对制备新的分子磁性材料很感兴趣。这些磁铁与大多数人熟悉的磁铁不同，比如氧化铁或镍。我们计划制造极小的磁铁--在单分子的规模上。作为化学家，我们研究物质的结构和性质：我们也从事通过一种称为化学合成的过程来制备新物质。大多数传统磁体的特性使得对其结构的操纵非常困难或不可能。另一方面，合成化学家能够改变分子结构。如果我们能够在分子前体的基础上制造磁铁，我们就有机会通过我们的合成操作来调整材料的性能。通过这种方式，我们可以创造出具有前所未有的性能的磁体：液体磁体或塑料磁体只是众多令人兴奋的可能性中的一小部分。事实上，我们希望将这些材料用于未来的磁数据存储介质或作为新的传感设备。我们预计，我们的材料将在未来极大地提高计算机数据存储容量和处理器速度，以及许多其他令人兴奋的应用。

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.