Yejun Li

Structure Assignment, Electronic Properties, and Magnetism Quenching of Endohedrally Doped Neutral Silicon Clusters, SinCo (n = 10–12)

The structures of neutral cobalt-doped silicon clusters have been assigned by a combined experimental and theoretical study. Size-selective infrared spectra of neutral Si(n)Co (n = 10-12) clusters are measured using a tunable IR-UV two-color ionization scheme. The experimental infrared spectra are compared with calculated spectra of low-energy structures predicted at the B3P86 level of theory. It is shown that the Si(n)Co (n = 10-12) clusters have endohedral caged structures, where the silicon frameworks prefer double-layered structures encapsulating the Co atom. Electronic structure analysis indicates that the clusters are stabilized by an ionic interaction between the Co dopant atom and the silicon cage due to the charge transfer from the silicon valence sp orbitals to the cobalt 3d orbitals. Strong hybridization between the Co dopant atom and the silicon host quenches the local magnetic moment on the encapsulated Co atom.

Modeling Size and Shape Effects on the Order–Disorder Phase‐Transition Temperature of CoPt Nanoparticles

�b is the cohesive energy per atom of the bulk material and N is the total number of atoms. In general, a NP is enclosed by several face planes. For the i -th plane, its surface area is S i and the corresponding atom density is ρ i . The parameter A i is the ratio between the total number of bonds of a surface atom in the i -th plane and total number of bonds of a core atom. Then

The geometric structure of silver-doped silicon clusters.

Cationic silver-doped silicon clusters, Si(n)Ag(+) (n=6-15), are studied using infrared multiple photon dissociation in combination with density functional theory computations. Candidate structures are identified using a basin-hopping global optimizations method. Based on the comparison of experimental and calculated IR spectra for the identified low-energy isomers, structures are assigned. It is found that all investigated clusters have exohedral structures, that is, the Ag atom is located at the surface. This is a surprising result because many transition-metal dopant atoms have been shown to induce the formation of endohedral silicon clusters. The silicon framework of Si(n)Ag(+) (n=7-9) has a pentagonal bipyramidal building block, whereas the larger Si(n)Ag(+) (n=10-12, 14, 15) clusters have trigonal prism-based structures. On comparing the structures of Si(n)Ag(+) with those of Si(n)Cu(+) (for n=6-11) it is found that both Cu and Ag adsorb on a surface site of bare Si(n)(+) clusters. However, the Ag dopant atom takes a lower coordinated site and is more weakly bound to the Si(n)(+) framework than the Cu dopant atom.

Thermal radiation of laser heated niobium clusters Nb N+, 8 ⩽ N ⩽ 22

The thermal radiation from small, laser heated, positively charged niobium clusters has been measured. The emitted power was determined by the quenching effect on the metastable decay, employing two different experimental protocols. The radiative power decreases slightly with cluster size and shows no strong size-to-size variations. The magnitude is 40-50 keV/s at the timescale of several microseconds, which is the measured crossover time from evaporative to radiative cooling.

MODELING THE MELTING TEMPERATURE OF METALLIC NANOWIRES

A model is developed to account for the size-dependent melting temperature of pure metallic and bimetallic nanowires, where the effects of the contributions of all surface atoms to the surface area, lattice and surface packing factors and the cross-sectional shape of the nanowires are considered. As the size decreases, the melting temperature functions of pure metallic and bimetallic nanowires decrease almost with the same size-dependent trend. Due to the inclusion of the above effects, the present model can also be applied to investigate the melting temperature depression rate of different low-dimensional system, accurately. The validity of the model is verified by the data of experiments and molecular dynamics simulations.