Grinding enhances the magnetic hardness of heterometallic diruthenium(ii,iii) carbonates with a kagome lattice structure

Abstract

The assembly of paddle–wheel Ru₂ building units affords a new trimetallic carbonate, Cs₃Cd(H₂O)₆[{Cd(H₂O)₃}₂{Ru₂(CO₃)₄}₃]·10H₂O (1), that contains structurally near-perfect kagome layers, {Ru₂(CO₃)₄}_n³ⁿ⁻, linked by octahedral Cd(H₂O)₃²⁺ into a nanoscale kagome network exhibiting ferromagnetic ordering below 3.5 K. The investigation of influences of the grinding method on the crystal samples of compound 1 reveals that the coercivity increases from ∼2.5 Oe to 44.0 Oe upon a grinding treatment for 180 minutes. The results demonstrate that compound 1 can vary from a soft magnet to a hard magnet simply by manually grinding the crystal samples to the nanoscale.