Room temperature study of the optical switching of a spin crossover compound inside its thermal hysteresis loop

We have studied the low-spin to high spin state phase transition induced by a single or a sequence of nanosecond laser pulses within the thermal hysteresis loop of the [Fe(NH2-trz)3](NO3)2-H2O spin crossover compound. We demonstrate that the final state that is photoinduced can be finely controlled by changing the central wavelength and the energy of the laser pulses. A simple model accounts for the observed phenomena and paves the way for the practical applications to optical data storage at room temperature of spin state transition compounds.