Related papers: What is the ground-state structure of intermediate…
The recent experimental characterization of B80- via photoelectron spectroscopy stimulated renewed interest in exploring B80 clusters. Here, a D3h-symmetric B80 bilayer structure has been proposed using density functional theory…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
We report equilibrium geometric structures of CuO2, CuO3, CuO6, and CuO clusters obtained by an all-electron linear combination of atomic orbitals scheme within the density-functional theory with generalized gradient approximation to…
The fcc-based structure of Yb2.75C60 is unique among metal-doped fullerene compounds, exhibiting long-range-ordered vacancies, significantly off-centered divalent Yb cations, and distorted, crystallographically inequivalent, orientationally…
A highly efficient semi-empirical Hamiltonian has been developed and applied to model the compact boron clusters with the intermediate size. The Hamiltonian, in addition to the inclusion of the environment-dependent interactions and…
We introduce a global optimization approach for binary clusters that for a given cluster size is able to directly search for the structure and composition that has the greatest stability. We apply this approach to binary Lennard-Jones…
Using a first-principles total energy methodology, we investigated the properties of graphene-like carbon mono and bilayers, functionalized with nitrogen and boron atoms. The resulting stable structures were explored in terms of their…
We study the electronic states of giant single-shell and the recently discovered nested multi-shell carbon fullerenes within the tight-binding approximation. We use two different approaches, one based on iterations and the other on…
We report the spontaneous formation of a GaP fullerene cage in ab-initio Molecular Dynamics simulations starting from a bulk fragment. A systematic study of the geometric and electronic properties of neutral and ionized GaP clusters…
Using density functional theory (DFT) and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations we show that the B12Hn and B12Fn (n = 0-4) quasi-planar structures are energetically more favorable than the corresponding icosahedral clusters. Moreover, we…
We model the quasicrystal-related structure CaCd$_6$, a bcc packing of icosahedral clusters containing tetrahedra which undergo orientational orderings at T<100 K. We use general schemes to evaluate an effective Hamltonian for…
We investigate the equilibrium geometries and the systematics of bonding in various isomers of a 24-atom boron cluster using Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics within the framework of density functional theory. The isomers studied are the…
We present novel structural motifs for boron-carbon nano-cages of the stochiometries B12C48 and B12C50, based on first principle calculations. These configurations are distinct from those proposed so far by the fact that the boron atoms are…
Endohedrally doped Si20 fullerenes appear as appealing building blocks for nanoscale materials. We investigate their structural stability with an unbiased and systematic global geometry optimization method within density-functional theory.…
Using first-principles methods we performed a theoretical study of carbon clusters in silicon carbide nanowires. We examined small clusters with carbon interstitials and antisites in hydrogen-passivated SiC nanowires growth along the [100]…
We investigate the structure of 13-particle clusters in binary alloys for various size ratios and different concentrations via MD simulation. Our goal is to predict which systems are likely to form local icosahedral structures when rapidly…
In recent experiments on sodium chloride clusters structural transitions between nanocrystals with different cuboidal shapes were detected. Here we determine reaction pathways between the low energy isomers of one of these clusters,…
Contrary to recent experimental evidence suggesting that the monocyclic ring is the most stable 20-atom carbon species, highly accurate calculations convincingly predict that the smallest fullerene, the dodecahedron C$_{20}$, has the lowest…
In order to control and tailor the properties of nanodots, it is essential to separate the effects of quantum confinement from those due to the surface, and to gain insight into the influence of preparation conditions on the dot physical…
Carbon nano-onions (CNO) are multi-shell fullerenes. In the present work, we used fully atomistic reactive (ReaxFF) molecular dynamics simulations to study the dynamics and structural transformations of CNO structures under high-velocity…