Heisenberg and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions controlled by molecular packing in tri-nuclear organometallic clusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how molecular packing influences Heisenberg and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in tri-nuclear organometallic clusters, revealing the role of electronic correlations, quantum interference, and spin-orbit coupling in shaping magnetic properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates how molecular orientation and interference effects control Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in tri-nuclear complexes, providing insights into quantum magnetism in organometallic systems.

Findings

Electronic correlations induce a quasi-one-dimensional spin model.

Molecular orientation controls the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction.

Interference effects significantly influence magnetic interactions.

Abstract

Motivated by recent synthetic and theoretical progress we consider magnetism in crystals of multi-nuclear organometallic complexes. We calculate the Heisenberg symmetric exchange and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya antisymmetric exchange. We show how, in the absence of spin-orbit coupling, the interplay of electronic correlations and quantum interference leads to a quasi-one dimensional effective spin model in a typical tri-nuclear complex, Mo$_3$S$_7$(dmit)$_3$, despite its underlying three dimensional band structure. We show that both intra- and inter-molecular spin-orbit coupling can cause an effective Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Furthermore, we show that, even for an isolated pair of molecules the relative orientation of the molecules controls the nature of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya coupling. We show that interference effects also play a crucial role in determining the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Thus, we argue, that multi-nuclear organometallic complexes represent an ideal platform to investigate the effects of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions on quantum magnets.