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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Fabrication of Periodic Gold Nanocup Arrays Using Colloidal Lithography
Published on: September 2, 2017
Where does the planar-to-nonplanar turnover occur in small gold clusters?
Ryan M Olson1, Sergey Varganov, Mark S Gordon
1Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
Abstract:
Several levels of theory, including both Gaussian-based and plane wave density functional theory (DFT), second-order perturbation theory (MP2), and coupled cluster methods (CCSD(T)), are employed to study Au6 and Au8 clusters. All methods predict that the lowest energy isomer of Au6 is planar. For Au8, both DFT methods predict that the two lowest isomers are planar. In contrast, both MP2 and CCSD(T) predict the lowest Au8 isomers to be nonplanar.
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