https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00124-7
Structural properties and reactivity of bimetallic silver-gold clusters
1
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Chemie,
Brook-Taylor-Strasse 2,
12489 Berlin, Germany
2
Dipartmento di Biotechnologie e Bioscienze Universita degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 2, 20126 Milano, Italy
Corresponding author: a vbk@chemie.hu-berlin.de
Received:
10
September
2002
Published online:
3
July
2003
Bimetallic silver-gold clusters are well suited to study changes in metallic versus “ionic”
properties involving charge transfer as a function of the size and the composition. We present structures,
ionization potentials (IP) and vertical detachment energies (VDE) for neutral and charged bimetallic AunAgm (
)
clusters obtained from density functional level of theory.
In the stable structures of these clusters Au atoms assume positions which favor charge transfer from Ag atoms.
In clusters with equal numbers of hetero atoms 
heteronuclear bonding is preferred to
homonuclear bonding,
giving rise to large values of ionization potentials. For larger clusters (n=m=5,10) stable structures
do not favor neither hetero bonding nor segregation into the single components, although they exhibit more metallic
than ionic features.
This remains valid also for Au8Ag12 cluster characterized by strong charge transfer to gold subunit. The influence of doping of pure gold clusters with silver atoms on VDE and IP values is discussed in context of their
reactivity towards O2 and CO molecules.
As a starting point we consider reactivity towards CO and O2 molecules on the example of AgAu- dimer.
The results show that the catalytic cycle can be fullfilled.
PACS: 31.15.Qg – Molecular dynamics and other numerical methods / 31.15.Ar – Ab initio calculations
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2003
