Crystal engineering in molecular magnetism

Molecule-based magnetic materials, dealing with those composed by molecular units assembled and tailored to yield interesting magnetic properties, have strongly benefited in the past from the concepts and methodologies of crystal engineering. In parallel, the latter field, which includes all endeavours to design and prepare molecular aggregates and solids with precisely controlled structures, has also profited from molecular magnetism. Our aim to gather both topics in a single themed issue was to stress their tight interrelationships that may fertilize both mutually from theoretical and experimental aspects. For the crystal engineering community this issue is an opportunity to obtain an overview of how difficult it is to control magnetic intermolecular interactions that are ultimately responsible for their macroscopic properties, whereas for the molecular magnetism community, this issue is an up-to-date presentation on where things stand in the more structurally oriented area of the field.

We are very delighted with the quality and originality of the articles which have been contributed to this themed issue and especially pleased to realize that most of them reflect our original goal. Thus, included contributions range from designing aspects of magnetic compounds to detailed preparative, structural and physicochemical studies of molecule-based materials with both organic and metal-organic nature that show either magnetic ordering or bistability phenomena. Overall, this issue shows up the health and perspectives of crystal engineering and molecular magnetism as research fields and we look forward to the next years for cross fertilizations between them.

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