We study the carbon-dope aluminum clusters by using time-of-flight mass spectrum experiments and {\em 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.
@article{arxiv.physics/0112054,
title = {Mass spectrometric and first principles study of Al$_n$C$^-$ clusters},
author = {Jijun Zhao and Bingchen Liu and Huajin Zhai and Rufang Zhou and Guoquan Ni and Zhizhan Xu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0112054},
year = {2009}
}