High-nuclearity cobalt coordination clusters: Synthetic, topological and magnetic aspects

Polynuclear coordination clusters of 3d metals continue to attract the intense interest of scientists from the synthetic inorganic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry and molecular magnetism communities. In this review we have focused on describing aspects of synthesis, structures and magnetic properties of Co coordination clusters with nuclearities higher than 4. Adopting our recently developed topological approach for the description of coordination clusters, we have classified the structural motifs of Co complexes which range in nuclearity from 5 to 36. Emphasis is given to the magnetic properties of Co coordination clusters. Some of them display slow magnetic relaxation at very low temperatures, mainly due to their large magnetic anisotropies. The possibility of magnetic anisotropies one and two orders of magnitude larger than seen so far for single-molecule magnets of other 3d-metal ions, promises a brilliant future in the research of polynuclear Co complexes. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.