Dual-Function Molecular Crystals Can Be Conducting and Magnetic

摘要

The eighth International Conference on Molecule-based Magnets was held in Valencia, Spain, last October and attracted more than 400 delegates, which was twice as many as attended the seventh conference, demonstrating just how active this area of research has become. The venue was particularly apt, because one of the most unusual materials to be discovered in this field was made by a group of chemists at the university there and was reported in paper #4; the material is both conducting and ferromagnetic at the same time. The motion of electrons in bulk metals like iron delivers both electrical conductivity and ferromagnetism. Though molecular materials have many electrons, they are not expected to exhibit either type of behavior because they keep their electrons under tight control. Nevertheless there are some such materials that conduct electricity and some which display magnetism. The former are to be found as conducting polymer wires and their discovery earned Alan MacDiarmid, Alan Heeger, and Hideki Shirakawa the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000.