Have we been here before? Inorganic precursors for collective electronic behaviour of molecular crystals

The community focused on collective electronic properties of organic and metal-organic molecular crystals sometimes assumes that these are uniquely a consequence of the fact that the lattice is composed of molecular building blocks. However, quantum mechanics has a wider horizon and precursors for some of the phenomena currently occupying our field were observed and investigated a while ago in various inorganic lattices. We recall some of the latter, which serve to highlight what really is unique to the molecular solid state. We also recall a simplified classification scheme to correlate crystal structures and physical properties. Examples from magnetism include one- and two-dimensional ferromagnetism and complex magnetic lattice topologies; from electron transport we mention low-dimensional superconductors incorporating localized magnetic moments