Surface supramolecular organization of a terbium (III) double-decker complex on graphite and its single molecule magnet behavior

The two dimensional self-assembly of a terbium (III) double-decker phthalocyanine on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG) from solution (by casting) was studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM), and it was shown that it forms highly regular rectangular 2-D nanocrystals on the surface, that are aligned with the graphite symmetry axes. Molecular Dynamics simulations were run in order to model the behavior of a collection of the double-decker complexes on HOPG. The results were in excellent agreement with the experimental results, showing that − after diffusion on the graphite surface − the molecules self-assemble into nanoscopic islands which align preferentially along the three main graphite axes. These low dimension assemblies of independent magnetic centers are only one molecule thick (as shown by AFM) and are therefore very interesting nanoscopic magnetic objects, in which all of the molecules are in interaction with the graphite substrate and might therefore be affected by it. The magnetic properties of these self-assembled bar-shaped islands on HOPG were studied by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), confirming that the compounds maintain their properties as single molecule magnets when they are in close interaction with the graphite surface.