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Insulating or Metallic: Coexistence of Different Electronic Phases in Zinc Clusters
Author(s) -
Aguado Andrés,
Vega Andrés,
Lebon Alexandre,
von Issendorff Bernd
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201409835
Subject(s) - cluster (spacecraft) , chemical physics , materials science , nanoparticle , metal , shell (structure) , electronic structure , core (optical fiber) , open shell , zinc , nanotechnology , condensed matter physics , chemistry , atomic physics , physics , composite material , metallurgy , computer science , programming language
How many of the several attributes of the bulk metallic state persist in a nanoparticle containing a finite number of atoms of a metallic element? Do all those attributes emerge suddenly at a well‐defined cluster size or do they rather evolve at different rates and in a broad size range? These fundamental questions have been addressed through a conjoint experimental/theoretical investigation of zinc clusters. We report the observation of novel coexistence phenomena involving different electronic phases: for some sizes, metallic and insulating electronic states coexist within a single, Janus‐like, nanoparticle; for the rest of sizes, we report the coexistence of two weakly interacting metallic phases with different dimensionalities, localized at the shell and the core of the nanoparticle. These fascinating features are due to an anomalously long core–shell separation that equips the shell and core regions with largely independent structural, vibrational, and thermal properties.