Mechanical switching of magnetic interaction by tweezers-type complexElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Synthetic procedures, spectroscopic, titration and crystallographic data. CCDC 1052163-1052165. For ESI and crystallographic data in CIF or other electronic format see DOI: 10.1039/c5cc04980f

A control of the interaction between two spin centers was achieved by using a mechanical motion in a terpy(Cu-salphen) 2 complex. Upon coordination a conformation change and switching from a paramagnetic to an antiferromagnetically coupled system was observed by EPR and SQUID measurements. An original approach using a mechanical motion to control the magnetic interaction between the two spin centers of terpy(Cu-salphen) 2 complexes is presented.