Abstract
The impact that the anion and alkyl group has on the electronic structures and magnetic properties of four mononuclear Mn(III) complexes is explored in [Mn(salEen-Br)2]Y (salEen-Br = 2-{[2-(ethylamino)ethylimino]methyl}-4-Br-phenol; Y = ClO4- 1 and BF4-·1/3CH2Cl2 2) and [Mn(salBzen-Br)2]Y (salBzen-Br = 2-{[2-(benzylamino)ethylimino]methyl}-4-Br-phenol; Y = ClO4- 3 and BF4- 4). X-ray structures of [Mn(salEen-Br)2]ClO4·0.45C6H14 1-hexane, [Mn(salEen-Br)2]BF4·0.33CH2Cl2·0.15C6H14 2-dcm-hexane, and 3-4 reveal that they crystallize in ambient conditions in the monoclinic P21/c space group. Lowering the temperature, 2-dcm-hexane uniquely exhibits a structural phase transition toward a monoclinic P21/n crystal structure determined at 100 K with the unit cell trebling in size. Remarkably, at room temperature, the axially elongated Jahn-Teller axis in 2-dcm-hexane is poorly defined but becomes clearer at low temperature after the phase transition. Magnetic susceptibility measurements of 1-4 reveal that only 3 and 4 show slow relaxation of magnetization with Δeff/kB = 27.9 and 20.7 K, implying that the benzyl group is important for observing single-molecule magnet (SMM) properties. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that the alkyl group subtly influences the orbital levels and therefore very likely the observed SMM properties.