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Possible ground-state structure of Au26: a highly symmetric tubelike cage
1Group of Computational Condensed Matter Physics, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China. wfa@nju.edu.cn
Abstract:
The stable tubelike Au(N) (N=26-28) has been found using the scalar relativistic all-electron density functional theory calculations, which becomes another powerful candidate for the lowest-energy Au(N), competing in energy with those space-filled structures suggested previously. Unlike the icosahedral "golden" fullerene Au32, these tubelike gold clusters may be closely related to the synthesized single-wall gold nanotubes (SWGNTs). The ground-state Au26 has a hollow tubelike structure constructed from the (6, 0) SWGNT, yielding a high-symmetry D6d cage, based upon which the most stable Au27 and Au28 can be obtained by adding one and two more capped atoms on its one end, respectively.
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