Eur. Phys. J. D 34, 19-22 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2005-00103-0

First-principles study of neutral and charged silver clusters

¹ Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei-230031, P.R. China
² Surface Physics Laboratory and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a xggong@fudan.edu.cn

Received: 6 September 2004
Published online: 13 July 2005

Abstract

The structures of neutral and charged Ag_n () clusters are comparably studied by the first principles methods. We find that the neutral silver clusters sustain two dimensional structures up to n=6 and the charged ones undergo a transition from two dimensional structures to three dimensional structures at n=6. The ionization potential, electron affinity and the energy gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital for all these clusters show an oscillating behavior with odd-even valence electron alteration. By calculating the dissociation energy, we have studied the possible dissociation channel of the silver clusters, the results are in agreement with the experiment.