Peculiarities of MCD C-term saturation behavior of the exchange coupled Co(II) dimers

Graphical abstract: The change of sign of the MCD signal with temperature and magnetic field increase can take place. The origin of this peculiarity is explained by the strong orbital contribution. Highlights: → MCD C-term saturation behavior of the exchange coupled cobalt dimer. → Strong orbital contribution to the magneto-optical behavior. → Change of sign of the MCD signal with temperature and magnetic field increase. - Abstract: The MCD C-term saturation behavior of the exchange coupled octahedrally coordinated cobalt dimers is studied for different types of distortion of the local surrounding of each interacting ion. It was found that in the case of antiferromagnetic exchange interaction the change of sign of the MCD signal with temperature and magnetic field increase can take place. This signal behavior is not the result of overlapping of different electronic transitions and it is characteristic of an individual MCD line. The origin of this magneto-optical behavior is explained by the strong contribution coming from the unquenched orbital angular momenta of interacting cobalt ions. The found peculiarity is inherent to complexes composed of nonequivalent cobalt ions as well as to the dimeric complexes with the equivalent Co ions with nonparallel local axes.