Heavy Atom Radicals as Conductive and Magnetic Materials

未来十年信息和能量转移技术面临的巨大挑战之一是开发具有多功能行为的环境友好材料，即提供两种或两种以上物理性能组合的系统，例如光学、导电、磁性，这些物理性能可以一起用于信息存储设备。例如，在新兴的自旋电子学领域，材料必须同时表现出导电和磁性特征。人们逐渐意识到，可以构建具有这种能力的分子或有机自由基，作为单组分磁性和电子材料，这引发了世界范围内对特定性质自由基的设计、合成和结构表征的兴趣激增。

One of the great challenges facing information and energy transfer technologies in the next decade is the development of environmentally friendly materials possessing multifunctional behavior, that is, systems that offer a combination of two or more physical properties, e.g., optical, conductive, magnetic, that can be used together in information storage devices. In the emerging field of spin-electronics, for example, materials must display both conductive and magnetic signatures.The emerging realization that it is possible to build molecular or "organic" radicals that function in this capacity, serving jointly as single-component magnetic and electronic materials, has sparked a world-wide surge in interest in the design, synthesis and structural characterization of property-specific radicals.