Dissertation
Photoelectron spectroscopy studies on novel doped clusters
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
12/2009
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005982
Abstract
Atomic clusters consisting of a few to few hundred atoms exhibit dramatically size-dependent chemical and physical properties, forming the foundation for nanoscience and nano-technology. Doping clusters with a foreign atom offers an additional dimensionality to fine tune their structures and properties. This dissertation describes photoelectron spectroscopic investigations on three series of single-atom-doped clusters, with a focus on their size-dependent geometric and electronic structures. In doping the small planar gold clusters (<= Au12- ), as presented in chapter three, we found that Agand Cu- doping have little influence on the overall structures of the parent gold clusters, except for MAu10- where an earlier 2D-3D structural transition was observed for the doped species as compared to the pure gold clusters; whereas the group-14 atoms (Si, Ge, Sn) form strong covalent bond with gold, whose doping significantly distort the planar geometries of the small gold clusters. In chapter four, we focus on doping the golden buckyball Au16- with different atoms. We concluded that the nature of dopant-Au interactions is the key factor in determining the structures of the doped golden cage clusters. We have shown that Cu, Ag, Zn, and In atom can be doped inside the golden buckyball with little structural distortion, while Si-, Ge- and Sn-doping lead to exohedral structures due to the strong dopant-Au local interactions. Transition metal atoms Fe, Co and Ni can also be doped inside Au16- to form magnetic golden cages. These doped clusters form a new class of endohedral golden buckyballs with tailored properties, analogous to the endohedral fullerenes. Chapter five presents the studies on a series of carbon-boron clusters: CB7 -, CB6 2-, CB6 -, C2B5 -, and CB8. These clusters were previously predicted to be novel species containing hypercoordinate carbon atom in planar geometries. However, our studies show that all these clusters adopt low symmetry structures and carbon avoids hypercoordination sites in these species. Thus, in contrast to the theoretical predictions, we conclude that none of these clusters is viable for designing hypercoordinate planar carbon.
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Details
- Title
- Photoelectron spectroscopy studies on novel doped clusters
- Creators
- Leiming Wang
- Contributors
- Lai-Sheng Wang (Chair)Gary S. Collins (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of Physics and AstronomyMatthew D. McCluskey (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of Physics and Astronomy
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Physics and Astronomy
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 188
- Identifiers
- 99901055131501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation