Photomagnetism of iron(ii) spin crossover complexes—the T(LIESST) approach

The Light-Induced Excited Spin State Trapping (LIESST) effect, encountered in some Spin-Crossover (SCO) complexes, is of major interest for the design of optical switches. Nevertheless, until now any applications have been prohibited, because the lifetimes of the photomagnetic states are long enough only at low temperatures. Hereby we review the recent progress made by using the T(LIESST) procedure, which consists of systematically measuring the limit temperature above which a photomagnetic effect in a material is erased by warming the material from 10 K at a rate of 0.3 K min−1. This method has been today applied to more than sixty SCO compounds and by comparing the various materials a relation between T(LIESST) and thermal spin transition (T1/2) temperatures has been obtained, i.e.T(LIESST) = T0 − 0.3T1/2. The second section reports part of works done to identify the parameters affecting the T0 factor; that is to find a guideline for the rational design of materials with long-lived photomagnetic lifetimes at working room temperature. Finally, we present the procedure used to simulate a T(LIESST) curve and illustrate it using the examples of a mononuclear SCO complex and of a binuclear SCO system displaying antiferromagnetic interactions.