Chiral & Luminescent Molecular Nano-Magnets

CHEMISTRY & GREEN CHEMISTRY

Lab: LCC

Duration: NanoX master Internship (8 months part-time in-lab immersion)
6 months full-time internship

Latest starting date: 08/01/2024

Localisation: LCC-CNRS, 205 route de Narbonne
31077 Toulouse (France)

Supervisors:
Jean-Pascal SUTTER sutter@lcc-toulouse.fr

Work package:
This internship project aims the preparation and study of the properties of molecular compounds known as single-molecule magnets. We will focus on chiral rare-earth ion (LnIII) complexes that are luminescent and behave like magnets. The idea behind this project is to probe the synergy between optical and magnetic properties, i.e. a magneto-optical effect, in molecular nano-magnets[1]. The development of this project combines chemical synthesis, characterizations, and physical properties investigations. In a first step the syntheses of the ligand (organic chemistry) and of the metal complexes using different LnIII salts (coordination chemistry) will be performed. In each step of the process various characterizations such as NMR, IR, UV-vis, Circular Dichroism, and by X-ray diffraction techniques, will be performed to ensure the purities of the products. The crystal structures of the novel complexes will also be investigated. Then, the luminescence and magnetic properties will be investigated. This study will be completed by theoretical calculations performed (in collaboration with LCPQ from Toulouse University).

Illustration: (top) principle of CPL (reproduction from [2]); (bottom) effective CPL for chiral molecular nanomagnet reported in ref[ 1]

References:
[1] Concomitant Emergence of Circularly Polarized Luminescence and Single-Molecule Magnet Behavior in Chiral-at-Metal Dy Complex. Elrez, B.; Liu, J.; Béreau, V.; Duhayon, C.; Horino, Y.; Suzuki, T.; Coolen, L.; Sutter, J.-P. Inorg. Chem. Front. 2020, 7, 4527. (https://doi.org/10.1039/d0qi00919a) [2] Circularly Polarized Luminescence in Nanoassemblies: Generation, Amplification, and Application Sang, Y.; Han, J.; Zhao, T.; Duan, P.; Liu, M. Adv. Mat. 2020, 32, 1900110 (https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201900110)

Areas of expertise:
Molecular material; coordination/molecular chemistry; molecular magnetism, Quantum Information materials

Required skills for the internship:
This internship requires a good background in molecular chemistry and physical chemistry, and an interest in synthesis and properties investigation. It will allow the student to become familiar with the field of molecular materials and acquire many characterization techniques & data analyses.