Depuis leur découverte dans les années 90, les molécules-aimants constituent une classe de matériaux magnétiques qui a attiré l'attention du fait de leur bistabilité magnétique. Ces systèmes donnent l’espoir formidable de pouvoir stocker un bit d’information à l’échelle moléculaire. Ainsi, leur organisation dans des réseaux est devenue un enjeu essentiel en vue de leur intégration dans des dispositifs. Lors de cette thèse, l’organisation contrôlée de ces molécules par chimie de coordination en utilisant différents connecteurs s’est révélée être une stratégie de choix. Le chapitre I présente une approche théorique de ce projet de recherche. Dans ce chapitre, les propriétés de molécules-aimants, chaînes-aimants, conversion de spin et transfert d'électron sont décrits et discutés. Le chapitre II contient la bibliographie pertinente sur les réseaux de coordination à base de molécules-aimants et les systèmes photoactifs bimétalliques conténant des groupements cyanures. Le chapitre III présente l'organisation de molécules aimants[Mn4] en réseaux 1D et 2D par des liens diamagnétiques (ions chlorures) ou des liens paramagnétiques contenant des ions métalliques (NiII, MnII et CuII). Les études physiques (cristallographie par rayons X, mesuresmagnétiques et de chaleurs spécifiques) et des analyses théoriques sur ces nouveaux réseaux ont montré des propriétés magnétiques améliorées par rapport à la molécule-aimant [Mn4] isolée. Dans le chapitre IV, nous avonspréparé de nouveaux connecteurs commutables pour in fine concevoir des réseaux de molécules-aimants photomagnétiques. Une approche « building-block » a été utilisée pour obtenir un composé binucléaire de Fe et Co.Des études spectroscopiques, électrochimiques et magnétiques ont été effectuées et ont révélé sans ambiguïté une conversion de spin thermo-induite à l'état solide, et un transfert d'électron intramoléculaire assisté par protonation contrôlée en solution, accompagnés de changements optiques et magnétiques. Pour la première fois, ce nouveaucomplexe montre deux processus de commutation distincts selon son état physique et le stimulus externe utilisé. / The beginning of the 1990’s marked the discovery of Single-Molecule Magnets (SMMs), which created the hope tostore information on a single molecule due to their magnetic bistability. However, it is becoming of strategicimportance to dedicate a part of our research to their organization in order to achieve devices for the potentialapplication. During this thesis work, our strategy was to exploit coordination chemistry to organize these moleculesin a controlled way by using different types of linkers.Chapter I covers theoretical backgrounds for this research project. In this chapter, Single-Molecule Magnets(SMMs), Single-Chain Magnets (SCMs), Spin Crossover (SC) and Electron Transfer (ET) systems are described anddiscussed. Chapter II contains relevant literature on SMM-based coordination networks and photoactive cyanidobasedbimetallic systems. Chapter III presents the organization of [Mn4] SMMs in 1D and 2D networks withdiamagnetic linkers (chlorido ions) or paramagnetic linkers containing NiII, MnII, and CuII ions. The extensivephysical studies (X-ray crystallography, magnetic and heat capacity measurements, and theoretical analysis) on thesenetworks demonstrated new magnetic behavior and enhanced energy barrier compared to the isolated [Mn4] SMMs.In Chapter IV, we prepared new switchable linkers based on the cyanido-bridged Fe/Co unit, to realizephotomagnetic networks of SMMs. A rational building-block approach has been used to design these dinuclearFe/Co complexes. Extensive spectroscopic, electrochemical and magnetic characterizations have been performed tounambiguously reveal in one of the synthesized complexes the presence of a spin crossover induced by temperaturein the solid-state, and an intramolecular electron transfer assisted by controlled protonation in solution, bothaccompanied by optical and magnetic changes. For the first time, this new complex shows two distinct switchingprocesses depending on its physical state and external stimuli.

Dans le domaine du stockage de l'information, la miniaturisation de l'unité magnétique portant l'information est un enjeu capital. Ainsi, la découverte de molécules possédant des propriétés de relaxation lente de leur aimantation, comparables à celles des aimants classiques, constitue une avancée majeure suscitant l'espoir de pouvoir un jour stocker l'information à l'échelle moléculaire.Cette thèse a pour but d'étudier les propriétés magnétiques des chaînes aimants. Ces chaînes sont constituées d'unités magnétiques liées par des interactions magnétiques au sein d'un réseau unidimensionnel. Au delà de leurs potentielles applications, les chaînes aimants sont parfaitement adaptées à l'étude fondamentale des chaînes de spins. Le premier chapitre de ce manuscrit constitue un rappel des propriétés statiques et dynamiques des chaînes aimants connues à ce jour. Le deuxième chapitre décrit les propriétés statiques des parois séparant les différents domaines d'aimantation dans des chaînes de spins de topologies magnétiques variées. Le troisième chapitre de ce manuscrit décrit les propriétés dynamiques des chaînes de spins d'Ising. Bien que seul le modèle de Glauber soit utilisé dans la littérature associée aux chaînes aimants, il existe une infinité de modèles dynamiques d'Ising.Grâce à l'étude détaillée de trois modèles, il est montré dans ce chapitre que l'application d'un champ magnétique permet de révéler différentes dynamiques de relaxation de l'aimantation pour chacun des modèles considérés. Ces résultats permettent enfin de proposer deux protocoles expérimentaux à même de déterminer le modèle dynamique le plus adapté à l'étude des chaînes aimants. / The size reduction of magnetic units able to store information is an important issue for the design of high-density data storage devices. The discovery of molecules that show slow relaxation of their magnetization, similar to classical magnets, is a great breakthrough in terms of molecular scale information storage. The work presented in this thesis is devoted to the study of the magnetic properties of Single Chain Magnets. Single Chain Magnets can be viewed as a one-dimensional assembly of anisotropic magnetic units linked by magnetic interactions. Beyond their potential applications, Single Chain Magnets are interesting prototypes for the fundamental study of spin chains. The first chapter of this manuscript summarizes some known static and dynamic properties of Single Chain Magnets. Chapter II is devoted to the static properties of domain walls, which link the magnetic domains in spin chains, considering various magnetic topologies. Chapter III is dedicated to the dynamic properties of Ising spin chains. In the Single Chain Magnet literature, the Glauber model is used to describe the dynamic properties of such spin chains. However, there exists an infinite number of dynamic Ising models. In this chapter, three dynamic models are studied in detail. We show that the presence of a magnetic field allows us to discern different magnetization relaxation behaviors associated with each dynamic model. These results allow us to establish two experimental protocols in order to determine the most suitable dynamic model to describe the properties of Single Chain Magnets.

This thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter gives an introduction to the field of low-dimensional magnetic and electronic systems and relevant numerical techniques. The recent developments in molecular magnets are highlighted. The numerical techniques are reviewed along with their advantages and disadvantages from the present perspective. Study of entanglement of a system can give a great insight into the system. At the last part of this chapter a general overview is given regarding entanglement, its measures and its significance in studying many-body systems. Chapter 2 deals with the technique that has been developed by us for the full symmetry adaptation of non-relativistic Hamiltonians. It is advantageous both computationally and physically/chemically to exploit both spin and spatial symmetries of a system. It has been a long-standing problem to target a state which has definite total spin and also belongs to a definite irreducible representation of a point group, particularly for non-Abelian point groups. A very general technique is discussed in this chapter which is a hybrid method based on valence-bond basis and the basis of the z-component of the total spin. This technique is not only applicable to a system with arbitrary site spins and belonging to any point group symmetry, it is also quite easy to implement computationally. To demonstrate the power of the method, it is applied to the molecular magnetic system, Cu6Fe8, with cubic symmetry. In chapter 3, the extension of the previous hybrid technique to electronic systems is discussed. The power of the method is illustrated by applying it to a model icosahedral half-filled electronic system. This model spans a huge Hilbert space (dimension 1,778,966) and is in the largest non-Abelian point group. All the eigenstates of the model are obtained using our technique. Chapter 4 deals with the thermodynamic properties of an important class of single-chain magnets (SCMs). This class of SCMs has alternate isotropic spin-1/2 units and anisotropic high spin units with the anisotropy axes being non-collinear. Here anisotropy is assumed to be large and negative, as a result, anisotropic units behave like canted spins at low temperatures; but even then simple Ising-type model does not capture the essential physics of the system due to quantum mechanical nature of the isotropic units. A transfer matrix (TM) method is developed to study statistical behavior of this class of SCMs. For the first time, it is also discussed in detail that how weak inter-chain interactions can be treated by a TM method. The finite size effect is also discussed which becomes important for low temperature dynamics. This technique is applied to a real helical chain magnet, which has been studied experimentally. In the fifth chapter a bipartite entanglement entropy of finite systems is studied using exact diagonalization techniques to examine how the entanglement changes in the presence of long-range interactions. The PariserParrPople model with long-range interactions is used for this purpose and corresponding results are com-pared with those for the Hubbard and Heisenberg models with short-range interactions. This study helps understand why the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique is so successful even in the presence of long-range interactions in the PPP model. It is also investigated if the symmetry properties of a state vector have any significance in relation to its entanglement. Finally, an interesting observation is made on the entanglement profiles of different states, across the full energy spectrum, in comparison with the corresponding profile of the density of states. The entanglement can be localized between two noncomplementary parts of a many-body system by performing local measurements on the rest of the system. This localized entanglement (LE) depends on the chosen basis set of measurement (BSM). In this chapter six, an optimality condition for the LE is derived, which would be helpful in finding optimal values of the LE, besides, can also be of use in studying mixed states of a general bipartite system. A canonical way of localizing entanglement is further discussed, where the BSM is not chosen arbitrarily, rather, is fully determined by the properties of a system. The LE obtained in this way, called the localized entanglement by canonical measurement (LECM), is not only easy to calculate practically, it provides a nice way to define the entanglement length. For spin-1/2 systems, the LECM is shown to be optimal in some important cases. At the end of this chapter, some numerical results are presented for j1 −j2 spin model to demonstrate how the LECM behaves.