Magnets come in all shapes and sizes; new examples based on coordination complexes, stable organic radicals and nanoparticles.

Magnetism is a truely amazing fundamental force that underpins many technologies that are a part of modern life. This talk will highlight three very different magnetic materials that we are developing. The first of these is a family of trinuclear lanthanide clusters with a pyridyl functionalised b-diketonate. Coordination compounds with triangular spin arrangements are a well known to produce interesting magnetic properties due to their highly anisotropic nature. We found some complexes exhibited a non magnetic ground state that did not interact with the applied magnetic field; or a toroidal spin arrangement.[1]

Verdazyls are an underutilised class of stable organic radicals based on a tetrazine heterocycles. Despite these molecules being capable of facilitating strong interactions between metal centres, they have not been widely studied. Largely this has been the result of poor accessibility. We have been focused on improving their synthesis, in the hope that we can develop new coordination complexes based on verdazyls.[2]

The translation of nanoparticles to useful applications is often hindered by the reliability of synthetic methodology to produce uniform larger particle (diameter >20 nm) systems. A series of iron oxide particles have been synthesised and the impact of size on how they agglomerate in aqueous media undergoing flow through a capillary tube have been studied as the basis for a new stroke model.[3] 

References
[1] C. Caporale et al., Dalton Trans., 2020, 49, 17421-17432.
[2] R.O. Fuller et al., Org. Biomol. Chem., 2021, 19, 10120-10138. 

[3] L.M. Landowski et al., Aus. J. Chem., 2022, 75, 102-110.