Issue 6, 2019

Contrasting motif preferences of platinum and gold nanoclusters between 55 and 309 atoms

Abstract

The atomic structure of size-selected Pt clusters in the range 10–600 atoms is investigated with aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and reveals significantly different behaviour from the existing data for Au clusters. The Pt clusters show a dominance of the FCC motif from relatively small sizes, whereas traditionally for Au multiple motifs – the icosahedron, decahedron and FCC motifs (and related structures) compete. The new data motivates a comprehensive computational investigation to better understand similarities and differences in the structures and energetics of the two different metallic clusters. Low energy structures of Pt and Au clusters with 55, 101, 147, 228 and 309 atoms (±2%) are identified using a global optimisation algorithm, and the relative energies found by local minimisation using density functional theory. Our computational results support the experimental observations; for Au clusters all motifs are comparably stable over the whole size range, whereas for Pt, the motifs only compete at the smallest sizes, after which the FCC motif is the most stable. Structural analysis suggests the greater tendency of Au towards amorphisation enables the icosahedron and decahedron to remain competitive at larger sizes.

Graphical abstract: Contrasting motif preferences of platinum and gold nanoclusters between 55 and 309 atoms

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
25 Feb 2019
Accepted
26 Apr 2019
First published
03 May 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2019,1, 2416-2425

Contrasting motif preferences of platinum and gold nanoclusters between 55 and 309 atoms

S. G. Lambie, G. R. Weal, C. E. Blackmore, R. E. Palmer and Anna L. Garden, Nanoscale Adv., 2019, 1, 2416 DOI: 10.1039/C9NA00122K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements