On the Role of the Internal Pressure on the Photo-Induced Spin-Crossover behavior of [FexM1-x(phen)2(NCS)2] solid solutions (M=Ni(II), Zn(II) and Cd(II))

Abstract: The thermal and light-induced magnetic properties of a family of metal-diluted spin-crossover complexes [FexM1-x (phen)2(NCS)2] (phen = 1,10-phenantholine and M = Ni (II), Cd(II)) is reported and compared to previous results obtained in the same series but with Zn(II) use to substitute Fe(II), with the ultimate goal to validate the influence of the size and the nature of the inert metal ion on the light-induced properties of spin-crossover compounds. For all the materials, we have measured systematically the T1/2 and T(LIESST) values. We observed a clear evidence of the fact that dilution has a strong effect on magnetic and photomagnetic properties. The magnitude of these effects depends strongly on the nature of the diluting metal. This comparison gives insights on the effect of the diluting ion size on the [T(LIESST),T1/2] temperatures, and hugely complete the previous studies on the effect of internal pressure on the photo-induced state lifetime.