Seeking Magneto-Structural Correlations in Easily Tailored Pentagonal Bipyramid Dy(III) Single-Ion Magnets

Controlling molecular magnetic anisotropy via structural engineering is delicate and fascinating, especially for single-molecule magnets (SMMs). Herein a family of dysprosium single-ion magnets (SIMs) sitting in pentagonal bipyramid geometry have been synthesized with the variable-size terminal ligands and counter anions, through which the subtle coordination geometry of Dy(III) can be finely tuned based on the size effect. The effective energy barrier (Ueff) successfully increases from 439 K to 632 K and the magnetic hysteresis temperature (under a 200 Oe/s sweep rate) raises from 11 K to 24 K. Based on the crystal-field theory, a semi-quantitative magneto-structural correlation deducing experimentally for the first time is revealed that the Ueff is linearly proportional to the structural-related value S2⁰ corresponding to the axial coordination bond lengths and the bond angles. Through the evaluation of the remanent magnetization from hysteresis, quantum tunneling of magnetization (QTM) is found to exhibit negative correlation with the structural-related value S_tun corresponding to the axial coordination bond angles.