Abstract
The discovery of magnetic bistability in more than 20 years ago marked the birth of molecular magnetism, an extremely fertile interdisciplinary field and a powerful route to create tailored magnetic nanostructures. However, the difficulty to determine interactions in complex polycentric molecules often prevents their understanding. is an outstanding example of this difficulty: although it is the forefather and most studied of all molecular nanomagnets, an unambiguous determination of even the leading magnetic exchange interactions is still lacking. Here we exploit four-dimensional inelastic neutron scattering to portray how individual spins fluctuate around the magnetic ground state, thus fixing the exchange couplings of for the first time. Our results demonstrate the power of four-dimensional inelastic neutron scattering as an unrivaled tool to characterize magnetic clusters.
- Received 14 July 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.217202
© 2017 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Peering into a Molecular Magnet
Published 22 November 2017
Researchers characterize the spin couplings in the prototypical single-molecule magnet using an advanced neutron scattering technique.
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