We
investigate the cause of spatial superexchange anisotropy in
a family of copper-based, quasi-two-dimensional materials with very
similar geometries. The compounds in this family differ mainly in
their inter-layer separation but they have very different magnetic
interactions, even within the basal plane. We use density functional
theory and Wannier functions to parameterize two complimentary tight-binding
models and show that the superexchange between the Cu2+ ions is dominated by a σ-mediated interaction between hybrid
Cu–pyrazine orbitals centered on the copper atoms. We find
no correlations between the strength of this exchange interaction
and homologous geometric features across the compounds, such as Cu
and pyrazine bond lengths and orientations of nearby counterions.
We find that the pyrazine tilt angles do not affect the Cu–pyrazine–Cu
exchange because the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital on pyrazine
is at a very high energy (relative to the frontier orbitals, which
are Cu-based). We conclude that careful control of the entire crystal
structure, including non-homologous geometric features such as the
inter-layer organic ligands, is vital for engineering magnetic properties.