Molecular spin ladders

The structural and magnetic characteristics of the recently discovered quantum spin ladders are summarised and the possibilities of supramolecular chemistry for developing such fascinating materials are discussed. The existing examples of molecular spin ladders clearly show that typical supramolecular and crystal engineering criteria, such as pi-pi overlap, S ... S and C-H ... S interactions and complementarity of size and shape, are useful in the construction of these magnetic quantum systems with intermediate dimensionalities between one-dimensional chains and two-dimensional square lattices.