No abstract

The effect of the directions of the anisotropy axes on the energy barriers of single-molecule magnets (SMMs) was investigated. By introducing nitrophenolate (NP)-type coligands with different substitutions, the energy barrier was significantly changed. The structural and magnetic properties of three novel SMMs based on trinuclear {Dy3O5} phenoxo- and methoxyl-bridged triangular motifs were explored. All complexes share the formula [Dy3(Hhmb)4(μ3-OMe)2(OMe)­(NP)]­[Dy3(Hhmb)4(μ3-OMe)2(NP)]·solvent·3Cl, where Hhmb = (2-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)­methylene­(benzoicotino)­hydrazine, secondary ligand NP = 2-nitrophenol (2-NP, complex 1), 2,4-dinitrophenol (2,4-DNP, complex 2), and 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (2,4,6-TNP, complex 3), and solvent = 2MeOH·2Et2O (1) and 4MeOH (2 and 3). Magnetic measurements for 1 and 2 revealed observable slow magnetic relaxation behavior with anisotropic energy barriers of 12.18 and 4.96 K, respectively, for SMMs and only the tail of the peaks in the out-of-phase susceptibility, χ″, was observed in complex 3. Comparing a series of NP coligands, we could easily study the correlation between the directions of the anisotropic axes and magnetic properties for this trinuclear SMM system.

The technique, nanoparticles-induced vertical alignment (NIVA), was applied to fabricate a guest-host liquid crystal display (GH-LCD) without conventional alignment layers. The GH-LCD produced by NIVA exhibited a high reflectance of approximately 59% in the voltage-off state and a low threshold voltage of approximately 2.1 V(rms). NIVA is very suitable to be applied for fabricating a plastic LCD requiring a low temperature process, and a flexible timepiece by using NIVA was demonstrated.

Transient currents induced by the polarity reversal of an applied dc voltage in nematic liquid crystal hybridized with montmorillonite clay have been studied. Comparative values of the ion-charge concentrations deduced from the experimental data suggest that the clay hybridized into liquid crystal has a great impact on the ion-charge concentration, which can be dramatically reduced to as low as to for a nematic cell containing merely 0.5 wt% clay. Such hybridization suppresses the formation of electric bilayers and the charge-screening effect. Due to the clay and liquid-crystal molecules being aligned to the direction of the field, a higher mobility is observed in hybridized cells. This study demonstrates that montmorillonite clay hybridized into liquid crystal yields many advantages to improve the electro-optical properties of the display device.

Al-B-Si alloy shows permeability at the gigahertz range and it is proposed that the underlying mechanism involves hyperfine splitting arising, from embedded boride domains.