The
organic chelating and bridging ligands 9,10-phenanthrenedione-9-oxime
(phenoxH) and 9,10-phenanthrenedione-9,10-dioxime (phendoxH2) were synthesized and subsequently employed for the first
time in heterometallic 3d/4f-metal
cluster chemistry. The general reaction between CuCl2·2H2O, LnCl3·6H2O, phenoxH, and NEt3 in a 1:2:2:4 molar ratio, in a solvent mixture comprising
MeCN and MeOH, afforded brown crystals of a new family of [Cu3LnCl3(phenox)6(MeOH)3] clusters (Ln = Gd (1), Tb (2),
Dy (3)) that possess an unprecedented [Cu3Ln(μ-NO)6]3+ “propeller”-like
core. Complexes 1–3 are the first
{Cu3Ln} clusters in which the outer CuII and
the central LnIII atoms are solely bridged by diatomic
oximato bridges. The {Cu-N-O-Ln} bridging units are very distorted
with torsion angles spanning the range 35.5–48.9° and
25.2–55.6° in 1 and 2, respectively.
As a result, complexes 1–3 are antiferromagnetically
coupled, in agreement with previously reported magnetostructural criteria
for oximato-bridged Cu/Ln complexes. The magnetic susceptibility data
for all complexes were nicely fit to an isotropic spin Hamiltonian
(for 1) or a Hamiltonian that accounts for the spin of
the CuII atoms, the spin component of the LnIII, the spin–orbit coupling (λ), an axial ligand-field
component around the LnIII atoms (Δ), and the Zeeman
effect (for the anisotropic 2 and 3). The
resulting fit parameters were J = −1.34 cm–1 and g = 2.10 (1), J = −1.42 cm–1, g
Cu = 2.10, and Δ = −26.3 cm–1 (2), and J = −1.70 cm–1, g
Cu = 2.05, and Δ = −38.1
cm–1 (3). The reported fitting procedure,
implemented in the PHI program, is here used for the first time. Even
if this method is only valid in high-symmetry Ln environments, when
it is properly used allows a very simple and efficient method to obtain
the exchange parameters. In light of the negative anisotropy, compounds 2 and 3 were found to exhibit frequency-dependent
tails of out-of-phase signals in the presence of a small external dc field, characteristic of the slow magnetization relaxation
of a single-molecule magnet. By using the Kramers–Kronig equations,
the effective energy barriers (U
eff) were
derived and reported as U
eff = 10.1 and
5.4 cm–1 for 2 and 3,
respectively.