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。 这项高度跨学科的建议架起了合成有机化学和凝聚态物理之间的桥梁，解决了基于新分子自由基材料的创建和表征问题，这些材料的物理性质位于传统金属和磁性绝缘体之间的交叉点。因此，这些体系构成了一类新的高度相关的导体，在开发磁性材料、磁敏电阻和高温超导体等方面具有潜在的应用。通过施加物理压力或通过分子(化学)修饰，可以很容易地微调它们的结构以及它们的磁性和电学性能，这一特点为磁热开关和磁光开关的设计提供了灵活性和机会。还将探索在光伏(太阳能电池)开发中使用这些新基团的潜力。从环境的角度来看，这些以有机、自由基为基础的材料特别有吸引力，因为它们的结构完全不含金属。

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. This highly interdisciplinary proposal, which bridges the interface between synthetic organic chemistry and condensed matter physics, addresses the creation and characterization of new molecular radical-based materials whose physical properties lie at the crossover point between a conventional metal and a magnetic insulator. As such these systems constitute a new class of highly correlated conductor, with potential applications in, for example, the development of magnetic materials, magnetoresistors and high-temperature superconductors. Their structures, and hence their magnetic and electronic performance can be easily fine-tuned either by the application of physical pressure or through molecular (chemical) modification, a feature which provides both flexibity and opportunity in the design of magnetothermal and magneto-optical switches. The potential for using these new radicals in the development of photovoltaics (solar cells) will also be explored. From an environmental perspective these organic, radical-based materials are particularly appealing, since their structures are completely metal-free.