Stable isomers and electronic, vibrational, and optical properties of WS₂ nano-clusters: A first-principles study

In this paper, we employ an evolutionary algorithm along with the full-potential density functional theory (DFT) computations to perform a comprehensive search for the stable structures of stoichiometric (WS₂)_n nano-clusters (n = 1 - 9), within three different exchange-correlation functionals. Our results suggest that n = 5 and 8 are possible candidates for the low temperature magic sizes of WS₂ nano-clusters while at temperatures above 500 Kelvin, n = 7 exhibits a comparable relative stability with n = 8. The electronic properties and energy gap of the lowest energy isomers were computed within several schemes, including semilocal Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof and Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr functionals, hybrid B3LYP functional, many body based DFT+GW approach, ΔSCF method, and time dependent DFT calculations. Vibrational spectra of the lowest lying isomers, computed by the force constant method, are used to address IR spectra and thermal free energy of the clusters. Time dependent density functional calculation in a real time domain is applied to determine the full absorption spectra and optical gap of the lowest energy isomers of the WS₂ nano-clusters.