X-ray magnetic circular dichroism-A versatile tool to study magnetism

An overview of different chemical complexes studied by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) is presented. We intend to show to the chemistry community the possibilities of this technique for the characterization of magnetically interesting systems. The versatility of XMCD is demonstrated using a wide variety of representative examples, such as spinels, bionanomagnets, functionalized nanoparticles, metal nanoparticles, (single) molecular magnets, butterfly molecules, photomagnetism, actinide materials, dilute magnetic semiconductors, and exchange spring magnets. The emerging technique of XMCD is shown to be of invaluable use in the design of magnetic particles and materials, and in the investigation of the remarkable diversity of systems that can be obtained and systematically tuned.