Iron in Graphene: Carbon or other covalently bonded materials, like boron nitride, can form two-dimensional sheets because of the strong bonding between the atoms. In contrast, metals share electrons in a three-dimensional delocalized way, and this could preclude the formation of thin stable sheets. Nevertheless, Zhao et al. (p. 1228 ) observed pure iron membranes suspended across the pores in a graphene sheet. This phenomenon was discovered when an iron chloride solution, used to process the graphene, decomposed to form pure iron films across the pores.

Increasing the temperature at which molecules behave as single-molecule magnets is a serious challenge in molecular magnetism. One of the ways to address this problem is to create the molecules with strongly coupled lanthanide ions. In this work, endohedral metallofullerenes Y₂@C₈₀ and Dy₂@C₈₀ are obtained in the form of air-stable benzyl monoadducts. Both feature an unpaired electron trapped between metal ions, thus forming a single-electron metal-metal bond. Giant exchange interactions between lanthanide ions and the unpaired electron result in single-molecule magnetism of Dy₂@C₈₀(CH₂Ph) with a record-high 100 s blocking temperature of 18 K. All magnetic moments in Dy₂@C₈₀(CH₂Ph) are parallel and couple ferromagnetically to form a single spin unit of 21 μ_B with a dysprosium-electron exchange constant of 32 cm⁻¹. The barrier of the magnetization reversal of 613 K is assigned to the state in which the spin of one Dy centre is flipped.