Authors
Puru Jena, A Welford Castleman Jr
Publication date
2006/7/11
Source
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume
103
Issue
28
Pages
10560-10569
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Description
The properties of elements from atoms to bulk can be divided into two regimes:(i) a scalable regime where properties vary smoothly as some power law until they reach the bulk limit and (ii) a nonscalable regime where the variation is highly nonmonotonic (1). In this latter region, characterized by clusters, unusual things can and often do arise because of quantum confinement and boundary effects. Clusters of nonmagnetic elements become magnetic, semiconducting materials exhibit metallic properties, metallic systems become semiconducting, the color of particles changes with size, noble metals become reactive, and brittle materials become malleable. These properties arise because of the unusual structure of the clusters and because the electrons belong to molecular orbitals and exhibit an energy gap, referred to as the highest occupied molecular orbital–lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (HOMO-LUMO …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
P Jena, AW Castleman Jr - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006