Cyano-bridged Ln^3＋-Cr^3＋ Binuclear Complexes [Ln（L）x（H2O）y^- Cr（CN）6]·mL·nH2O （Ln=La-Nd, x=5, y=2, m=1 or 2, n=2 or 2.5; Ln-Sm-Dy, Er, x=4, y=3, m=0, n=1.5 or 2.0; L= 2-pyrrolidinone）： Structure, Magnetism and Spin Density Map

In order to shed light upon the nature and mechanism of 4f-3d magnetic exchange interactions, a series of binuclear complexes of lanthanide（3＋） and chromium（3＋） with the general formula [Ln（L）5（H2O）2Cr（CN）6]·mL· nH2O （Ln=La （1）, Ce （2）, Pr （3）, Nd （4）; x=5, y=2, m=1 or 2, n=2 or 2.5; L=2-pyrrolidinone） and [Ln（L）4（H2O）3Cr（CN）6] ·nH2O （Ln=Sm （5）, Eu （6）, Gd （7）, Tb （8）, Dy （9）, Er （10）; x=4, y=3, m=0, n= 1.5 or 2.0; L=2-pyrrolidinone） were prepared and the X-ray crystal structures of complexes 2, 6 and 7 were determined. All the compounds consist of a Ln-CN-Cr unit, in which Ln^3＋ in a square antiprism environment is bridged to an octahedral coordinated Cr^3＋ ion through a cyano group. The magnetic properties of the complexes 3 and 6-10 show an overall antiferromagnetic behavior. The fitting to the experimental magnetic susceptibilities of 7 give g= 1.98, J=0.40 cm^-1, zJ＇= -0.21 cm^-1 on the basis of a binuclear spin system （Scd=7/2, Scr=3/2）, revealing an intra-molecular Gd^3＋-Cr^3＋ ferromagnetic interaction and an inter-molecular antiferromagnetic interaction. For 7 the calculation of quantum chemical density functional theory （DFT）, combined with the broken symmetry approach, showed that the calculated spin coupling constant was 20.3 cm^-1, supporting the observation of weak ferromagnetic intra-molecular interaction in 7. The spin density distributions of 7 in both the high spin ground state and the broken symmetry state were obtained, and the spin coupling mechanism between Gd^3＋ and Cr^3＋ was discussed.