Solvothermal synthesis of paramagnetic molecular clusters

A brief overview is given of the literature of the use of solvo-thermal techniques - chemistry in superheated solvents - towards paramagnetic cluster synthesis. Although these techniques have been used extensively to prepare infinite lattice magnetic materials, there is much less work on preparing discrete molecular clusters other than the polyoxovanadates and -molybdates. This microreview details some of our early success in using these techniques towards high-nuclearity vanadium(III), chromium(III), manganese (II/III), iron(III) and nickel(II) clusters, including some very high spin ground state clusters (S :5 25), and therefore demonstrates the potential in the synthesis of molecular materials such as single-molecule magnets. (C) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2004.