Molecular Approaches towards Magnetoelectric Materials – Magneto-e

Magnetoelectrics, with their coupled electric and magnetic polarizations, are promising candidates for a number of applications. Specifically, such materials offer the possibility to control the magnetic properties by electric fields and vice versa. This property is extremely appealing regarding Today’s enormous global energy expenditure in our society. Despite the continuous development of magnetoelectric materials, notably in inorganic oxides, there remains tremendous demand for the development of a broader set of molecule-based magnetoelectrics. In particular, general molecular design principles and in-depth understanding of cross coupling for molecule-based magnetoelectrics are still lacking due in large part to a paucity of synthesized materials available to date.
In this context, Magneto-e aims at harnessing innovative molecular building block approaches to rationally synthesize molecule-based magnetoelectric materials, and to carry out fundamental structure-function studies to guide the synthesis of future materials. To accomplish this objective, we will synthesize new designer magnetic molecule-based systems functionalized with tailored organic building blocks for electric polarization. In particular, the addressed challenge will be tackled by designing new coordination compounds comprising abundant 3d transition metal ions. Our bottom-up approach will allow molecular control over properties such as dipole moment, chirality, magnetic coupling and magnetic anisotropy. The efficient feedback between syntheses and analyses will guide us to establish general chemical design strategies towards molecule-based magnetoelectric materials. Moreover, the developed class of materials that feature tremendous collaborative potential will bridge multidisciplinary fields including synthetic chemistry, materials science and condensed matter physics.