Single-molecule toroics are systems that combine spin and chirality at the molecular level. They are promising candidates for applications in data storage, chiral spintronics and magnetoelectric devices. Over the past two decades, substantial progress has been made in the design of toroidal spin states via ligand design and coordination chemistry strategies. However, achieving homochiral magnetic vortex configurations across both molecular and unit-cell scales-a key prerequisite to induce the toroidal polarization using a homogeneous magnetic field-remains challenging.
In this study, we report enantiopure chiral dysprosium triangles in which introduction of structural chirality induces spin homochirality. Magneto-chiral dichroism (MChD) spectroscopy, a magneto-optical technique sensitive to both chirality and magnetization, reveals unusual behaviours below 4.5 K, the temperature at which the coupling between Dy(III) ions favours the generation of a toroidal spin state. These results establish MChD spectroscopy as the technique of choice to provide experimental evidence of the toroidal moments orientation within the structure (toroidal spin texture) and to correlate the toroidal moment orientation (spin chirality) with the absolute configuration of the system (structural chirality).
More details in Nature Chemistry 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s41557-026-02070-4
Contact: matteo.atzori [at] @lncmi.cnrs.fr, cyrille.train [at] @lncmi.cnrs.fr