The Electronic Structure of Beryllium Chains

We present an ab initio theoretical study of quasi one-dimensional beryllium chains, Be _N, from an electronic structure perspective for N = 3, 4,···, 12. In particular, linear and cyclic systems were compared by using high-quality coupled-cluster formalism. Both linear and cyclic species were found to be local minima on the corresponding potential energy surface, for all the considered values of N. The linear geometry is the most stable one only in the case of Be₄. Several indicators (energy gap, position spread tensor, locality of the molecular orbitals) clearly show that both linear and cyclic one-dimensional structures, unlike three-dimensional bulk beryllium, have a covalent insulating nature.