Karo Michaelian

Chirality in Bare and Passivated Gold Nanoclusters

Detailed knowledge of the lattice structure, shape, morphology, surface structure, and bonding of bare and passivated gold clusters is fundamental to predict and understand their electronic, optical, and other physical and chemical properties. This information is essential to optimizing their utilization as novel nanocatalysts, 1 and as building-blocks of new molecular nanostructured materials, 2 with potential applications in nanoelectronics 3 and biological diagnostics. 4 An effective theoretical approach to determine gold cluster structures is to combine genetic algorithms and many-body potentials ~to perform global structural optimizations!, and first-principles density functional theory ~to confirm the energy ordering of the local minima!. Using this procedure we recently found many topologically interesting disordered gold nanoclusters with energy near or below the lowestenergy ordered isomer. 5‐ 8 The structures of these clusters

Negative heat capacity of sodium clusters

Heat capacities of

Scintillation response of nuclear particle detectors

{\mathrm{Na}}_{N},

STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF BIMETALLIC CLUSTERS FROM DENSITY FUNCTIONAL CALCULATIONS

N=13,

Hybrid DNA-gold nanostructured materials: an ab initio approach

20, 55, 135, 142, and 147, clusters have been investigated using a many-body Gupta potential and microcanonical molecular-dynamics simulations. Negative heat capacities around the cluster meltinglike transition have been obtained for

Thermodynamic dissipation theory for the origin of life

N=135,

A non-linear irreversible thermodynamic perspective on organic pigment proliferation and biological evolution

142, and 147, but the smaller clusters

Luminescence model with quantum impact parameter for low energy ions

(N=13,

DNA Denaturing through UV-C Photon Dissipation: A Possible Route to Archean Non-enzymatic Replication

20, and 55) do not show this peculiarity. By performing a survey of the cluster potential-energy landscape (PEL), it is found that the width of the distribution function of the kinetic energy and the spread of the distribution of potential-energy minima (isomers) are useful features to determine the different behavior of the heat capacity as a function of the cluster size. The effect of the range of the interatomic forces is studied by comparing the heat capacities of the