Magnetic Bistability at a Record High Temperature in a Sub-Monolayer of Endohedral Fullerenes

Endohedral metallofullerenes are only slightly larger than the well-known “buckyballs” C₆₀, and they contain a so-called endohedral unit, which can exhibit magnetic bistability. A team of the Leibniz Institute for Solid State Research (IFW) from Dresden, Germany, led by Dr Alexey Popov has now demonstrated a record blocking temperature of 28 Kelvin (-245 °C) at which the magnetic bistability still survives in a submonolayer of a chemically functionalized species of endofullerenes.

In this research, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements at low temperatures and high magnetic field at the X-Treme beam line are crucial because they reveal the magnetic moment of the terbium atoms in the endohedral unit with ultra-high sensitivity.

The results pave the way toward using such single-molecule magnets as information carriers or magnetic bits.