Changing stripes: The spin‐transition compound 1 can be nanopatterned by unconventional and soft lithography to give crystalline, well‐oriented, μm‐scale structures arranged in stripes on a silica surface. These findings have potential applications in electronic devices and information storage.

We present a study on thin deposits and patterning of 1-D spin-crossover compounds Fe(II)-(L)(2)H](ClO(4))(3)·MeOH [L = 4'-(4'''-pyridyl)-1,2':6'1''-bis- (pyrazolyl) pyridine] (1) that exhibit a reversible, thermally driven spin transition at room temperature. Micrometric rodlike crystals of 1 on silicon surfaces are achieved by drop casting and solvent annealing. We observed that the crystallinity of thin deposits and spin-transition properties critically depends on the deposition procedure. Furthermore, we proved processability and patterning using unconventional wet lithography that reduces the crystallite formation time by 1 order of magnitude. Thin deposits of 1 were characterized by atomic force microscopy, polarized optical microscopy and X-rays, and the switching properties were characterized by Raman spectroscopy.

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We investigate if the functionality of spin crossover molecules is preserved when they are assembled into an interfacial device structure. Specifically, we prepare and investigate gold nanoparticle arrays, into which room-temperature spin crossover molecules are introduced, more precisely, [Fe(AcS-BPP)2](ClO4)2, where AcS-BPP = (S)-(4-{[2,6-(dipyrazol-1-yl)pyrid-4-yl]ethynyl}phenyl)ethanethioate (in short, Fe(S-BPP)2). We combine three complementary experiments to characterize the molecule-nanoparticle structure in detail. Temperature-dependent Raman measurements provide direct evidence for a (partial) spin transition in the Fe(S-BPP)2-based arrays. This transition is qualitatively confirmed by magnetization measurements. Finally, charge transport measurements on the Fe(S-BPP)2-gold nanoparticle devices reveal a minimum in device resistance versus temperature, R(T), curves around 260-290 K. This is in contrast to similar networks containing passive molecules only that show monotonically decreasing R(T) characteristics. Backed by density functional theory calculations on single molecular conductance values for both spin states, we propose to relate the resistance minimum in R(T) to a spin transition under the hypothesis that (1) the molecular resistance of the high spin state is larger than that of the low spin state and (2) transport in the array is governed by a percolation model.