Iron spin-crossover compounds: from fundamental studies to practical applications.

Over the past five years, the spin-crossover (SCO) phenomenon has experienced a clear new lease of interest from the scientific community coinciding with the recent publication of remarkable new advances. This perspective paper describes five illustrative examples of SCO systems, published during the past twelve months, showing new aspects of the unique and very appealing behaviour of these molecular switches, which may find interesting applications in the near future.