Popis: |
Spin-crossover (SCO) materials display many fascinating behaviors including collective phase transitions and spin-state switching controlled by external stimuli, e.g., light and electrical currents. As single-molecule switches, they have been fêted for numerous practical applications, but these remain largely unrealized-partly because of the difficulty of switching these materials at high temperatures. We introduce a semiempirical microscopic model of SCO materials combining crystal field theory with elastic intermolecular interactions. For realistic parameters, this model reproduces the key experimental results including thermally induced phase transitions, light-induced spin-state trapping (LIESST), and reverse-LIESST. Notably, we reproduce and explain the experimentally observed relationship between the critical temperature of the thermal transition |