Abstract:
The pioneering work by Alfred Werner in 1893 described the structure of octahedral
transition metal complexes and the coordination number of metal ions. This work was the
origin of modern coordination chemistry and thereafter there has been a tremendous
development in this field. The extensive study over the years has now made it possible for
the chemist to adopt rational synthetic methodologies to obtain desired coordination
compounds with novel properties. On the most basic level, the coordination compounds
can be described as compounds containing metal nodes linked by inorganic/organic
ligands through metal-ligand coordination bond. Depending on their dimensionality, such
compounds can be broadly classified into two classes, discrete coordination complexes
and coordination polymers (CPs).1 The former include zero-dimensional (0D) polynuclear
complexes (Figure 1) which are formed driven by the spontaneous self-assembly of
selected metal ions with suitable ligands containing multiple binding sites. Among the
zero-dimensional (0D) discrete complexes, synthesis and study of magnetic polynuclear
coordination clusters are highly motivated due to the structural novelty as well as the
potential applications in the field of molecular magnetism.3
