Nanoscopic molecular magnets

Nanoscopic molecular magnets have attracted tremendous interest in recent years both from an experimental and a theoretical point of view because of their potential application in magnetic data storage devices, quantum computing and molecular spintronics. These molecules have crucial advantages over magnetic nanoparticles in terms of their perfectly mono-dispersed phase, chemical flexibility and high purity. This review discusses a few basic concepts that are needed to understand the magnetic properties observed in nanoscopic molecular magnets, a chemical approach for their synthesis and magneto-structural correlations. It includes a few selected examples and discusses the new trends in the field.