The book deals with recent scientific highlights on molecular magnetism in Europe. Molecular magnetism is a new interdisciplinary discipline gathering together chemists and physicists, theoreticians and experimentalists. The book intends to provide the reader with documented answers to some current questions. How chemists can use soft conditions to transform molecules in light and transparent magnets? How a molecular system can behave as a single molecule magnet? How to combine several functions in the same molecular system? How light can be used to switch molecular magnetic properties? How can molecules be used for ultimate high density information storage or in quantum computing? What kind of methods do physicists develop and use to explore these new properties of matter? What kind of concepts and calculations can be provided for theoreticians to design new objects and to better understand the field and to enlarge its exciting developments?

This book provides the reader with a unified understanding of the rapidly expanding field of molecular materials and devices: electronic structures and bonding, magnetic, electrical and photo-physical properties, and the mastering of electrons in molecular electronics. This revised edition includes updates and additions on hot topics such as molecular spintronics (the role of spin in electron transport) and molecular machines (how electrons can generate molecular motions). Chemists will discover how to understand the relations between electronic structures and properties of molecular entities and assemblies, and to design new molecules and materials. Physicists and engineers will realize how the molecular world fits in with their need for systems flexible enough to check theories or provide original solutions to exciting new scientific and technological challenges. The non-specialist will find out how molecules behave in electronics at the most minute, sub-nanosize level.