An imido ligand significantly enhances the effective energy barrier of dysprosium(iii) single-molecule magnets.

We report herein an imido ligand 1,3-bis(2,6-diisopropylphenyl) imidazolin-2-imine (ImDippNH) that can form a very short Dy-N bond (2.12 Å) with the dysprosium(iii) ion, which leads to a much larger effective energy barrier for magnetisation reversal (803 K) compared to the analogous alkoxide ligand (53 K). Moreover, we predict that a linear two-coordinate [Dy(ImDippN)2]+ complex may have an effective energy barrier larger than 4000 K.