Laburpena
The discovery of the first Single-Molecule Magnet, Mn12-ac, in 1993 changed the perspective of how information
can be stored. The current bit, occupying few hundreds of nanometers in present devices, would be
minimized to tens of angstroms at molecular level. However, until a couple of years these materials could
only operate at temperatures near to the absolute zero. From 1993 to date, the field of Single-Molecule
Magnets (SMMs) has continuously evolved thanks to the close collaboration of chemists and physicists
obtaining materials already operating above the liquid nitrogen temperature. This long journey, however,
has involved the study of many different routes towards high performance SMMs, being each of them
essential in order to deeply understand the quantum dynamics behind these molecules. An era of high spin
3d metal clusters was the beginning of everything, but it went through highly anisotropic low coordinate
3d compounds, lanthanide based magnets, radical bridged compounds and 3d-4f mixed systems, among
others, to end up in the current state of the art dysprosium metallocenes. Furthermore, after the magnetic
studies in bulk, SMM based hybrid systems are emerging for future application devices, which also involve
very interesting multifunctionalities. All in all, this work aims to explain how these materials work and
show the trajectory and some of the major advances that have been made during recent years in this field