Enhanced magnetic hardness in a nanoscale metal-organic hybrid ferrimagnet.

A new layered metal-organic hybrid compound, namely, [Co(3)(μ(3 -OH)(2)(BTP)(2)] (1; BTP=4-(3-bromothienyl)phosphonate), is reported. The inorganic layer can be viewed as a pseudo-Kagomé lattice composed of corner-sharing irregular triangles of Co(3) (μ(3)-OH), with the cavities filled with the PO(3) groups. The interlayer space is occupied by the 3-bromothienyl groups of BTP(2-). The bulk sample of compound 1 experiences a long-range ferromagnetic ordering below 30.5 K, with a coercivity (H(c)) of 5.04 kOe at 5 K. A systematic study on the size-dependent magnetic coercivity of 1 reveals that the coercivity of 1 increases with reduced particle size from the micrometer to the nanometer scale. When the particle size is about 50-200 nm, the coercivity reaches 24.2 kOe at 5 K. The results demonstrate that compound 1 can vary from a soft magnet to one of the hardest molecule-based magnets, simply by reducing the particle size to nanoscale region.