Heavy Atom Radicals as Conductive and Magnetic Materials

信息和能量传输技术在未来十年面临的巨大挑战之一是开发具有多功能行为的环保材料，即提供两种或两种以上物理特性（例如光学、导电、磁性）组合的系统，这些特性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，材料必须同时显示导电和磁性特征。人们逐渐认识到，有可能构建具有这种功能的分子或“有机”自由基，作为单组分磁性和电子材料共同服务，这引发了世界范围内对设计、合成和结构表征性能特定自由基的兴趣激增。这个高度跨学科的提案，在合成有机化学和凝聚态物理之间架起了桥梁，解决了新的分子基材料的创建和表征，其物理性质位于传统金属和磁性绝缘体之间的交叉点。因此，这些系统构成了一类新的高度相关导体，在磁性材料、磁电阻和高温超导体的发展中具有潜在的应用。它们的结构，因此它们的磁性和电子性能可以很容易地通过物理压力的应用或通过分子（化学）修饰来微调，这一特性为磁热和磁光开关的设计提供了灵活性和机会。这些新自由基在太阳能电池发展中的潜力也将被探索。从环保的角度来看，这些有机的、基于自由基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.