Single-Molecule Magnets

Abstract

Magnets are widely used in a large number of applications, and their market is larger than that of semiconductors. Information storage is certainly one of the most important uses of magnets, and the lower limit to the size of the memory elements is provided by the superparamagnetic size, below which information cannot be permanently stored because the magnetization freely fluctuates. This occurs at room temperature for particles in the range of 10–100 nm, owing to the nature of the material. However, even smaller particles can in principle be used either by working at lower temperatures or by taking advantage of the onset of quantum size effects, which can make nanomagnets candidates for the construction of quantum computers.