Impact of single crystal properties on nucleation and growth mechanisms of a spin transition

S. Bedoui (1) , William Nicolazzi (2, 3) , Sipeng Zheng (4) , Sylvestre Bonnet (4) , Gábor Molnár (2) , Azzedine Bousseksou (2)

1 Laboratoire de Micro-optoélectronique et Nanostructures [Monastir]
2 LCC - Laboratoire de chimie de coordination
3 UT3 - Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier
4 Leiden University - Leiden Institute of Chemistry

The authors have studied the spatio-temporal development of the spin transition in different single crystals of the mol. complex [Fe(bapbpy)(NCS)2] using optical microscopy. The thermal spin transition proceeds by nucleation at macroscopic defects, followed in most cases by anisotropic growth. A lower cryst. quality leads to multi-site nucleation and intermittent spin transitions. Each crystal of a same spin crossover complex can have its proper spin transition kinetics depending on its cryst. properties and intrinsic microstructure.

Domaines: Chimie de coordination

S. Bedoui, William Nicolazzi, Sipeng Zheng, Sylvestre Bonnet, Gábor Molnár, et al.. Impact of single crystal properties on nucleation and growth mechanisms of a spin transition. Polyhedron, 2015, 87, pp.411-416. ⟨10.1016/j.poly.2014.12.010⟩. ⟨hal-01923709⟩