Mass spectrometric and first principles study of AlₙC- clusters

Original · EN

We study the carbon-dope aluminum clusters by using time-of-flight mass spectrum experiments and ab initio calculations. Mass abundance distributions are obtained for anionic aluminum and aluminum-carbon mixed clusters. Besides the well-known magic aluminum clusters such as Al₁₃- and Al₂₃-, Al₇C- cluster is found to be particularly stable among those AlₙC- clusters. Density functional calculations are performed to determine the ground state structures of AlₙC- clusters. Our results show that the Al₇C- is a magic cluster with extremely high stability, which might serve as building block of the cluster-assembled materials.