  The ground state and thermodynamic properties of spin-1 and spin-3/2 chains
are investigated via exactly solved su(3) and su(4) models with physically
motivated chemical potential terms. The analysis involves the Thermodynamic
Bethe Ansatz and the High Temperature Expansion (HTE) methods. For the spin-1
chain with large single-ion anisotropy, a gapped phase occurs which is
significantly different from the valence-bond-solid Haldane phase. The
theoretical curves for the magnetization, susceptibility and specific heat are
favourably compared with experimental data for a number of spin-1 chain
compounds. For the spin-3/2 chain a degenerate gapped phase exists starting at
zero external magnetic field. A middle magnetization plateau can be triggered
by the single-ion anisotropy term. Overall, our results lend further weight to
the applicability of integrable models to the physics of low-dimensional
quantum spin systems. They also highlight the utility of the exact HTE method.
