Multiferroic materials that exhibit both ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity are of great interest for memory and logic device applications due to their capability to encode information in electric polarization and magnetization with four logic states. However, the trend that magnetism and ferroelectricity usually exclude each other results in the rarity of such materials, and most of explored multiferroic materials focus on pure inorganic compounds. Up to now, it still remains a great challenge for the rational design of molecular multiferroic materials.

　　Both ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties were observed in two enantiomerically pure nanoscale manganese cluster complexes supported by chiral Schiff base ligands, each of which comprises a nanoscale 22-nucleus mixed-valence manganese(II/III) supratetrahedral cluster cation {[Mn^III₃Mn^II(O)(H₂O)₃(L)₃]₄[Mn^III₆Cl₄O₄]} and an equilateral-triangle trinuclear manganese(III) cluster anion [Mn^III₃O(H₂O)₃(L)₃] with C3 symmetry. This result demonstrated a promising approach to nanoscale multiferroic molecule-based materials that uses a strategy involving chiral Schiff base manganese clusters.

Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2010, 132, 4044-4045.