Exchange coupling transformations in Cu (II) heterospin complexes of “breathing crystals” under structural phase transitions

Family of “breathing crystals” is the polymer-chain complexes of Cu(hfac)2 with nitroxides. The polymer chains consist of one-, two- or three-spin clusters. The “breathing crystals” experience simultaneous magnetic and Jahn-Teller type structural phase transitions with change of total cluster spin and drastic change of bond lengths (ca. 10-12%). For the first time the intra-cluster magnetic couplings in ”breathing crystals” have been calculated both by band structure methods GGA + U and hybrid DFT (B3LYP and PBE0) for the isolated exchange clusters. The temperature dependence of the magnetic coupling constant was calculated for two polymer-chain compounds of the “breathing crystal” family - C21H19CuF12N4O6 with the chains containing two-spin clusters and C22H21CuF12N4O6 with the chains of alternating three-spin clusters and one-spin sites. It was found that adding a Hubbard-like parameter not only to the copper 3d electrons but also to the oxygen 2p electrons (GGA + Ud + Up approach) results in an improved description of exchange coupling in the “breathing crystal” compounds. At the same time treatment of the isolated clusters by a large basis hybrid DFT with high computational cost provides a similar quality fit of the experimental magneto-chemical data as that for the GGA + Ud + Up band structure calculation scheme. Our calculations also showed that in spite of the abrupt transformation of the magnetic coupling constant under the phase transition, the band gap in the “breathing crystals” remains about the same value with temperature decrease.