Metal clusters size observations

Palladium clusters deposited on amorphous carbon have been studied by XPS and UPS [28] and both techniques show broadening of the d-band peak as cluster size increases. The d-threshold shifts towards Ep as cluster size increases. In UPS studies the d-emission of the single atom has its peak at 3.0 eV below Ep, whereas the d-threshold is 2eV below Ep. Palladium clusters evaporated onto Si02 have been studied by UPS [38]. At large coverages of the Pd metal evaporated (> 10 atoms/cm ), a high emission intensity at Ep excited with photons of 21.2 eV (He(I)) or 40.8 eV (He(II)) as excitation source, is observed. This feature is characteristic in the spectra from bulk Pd samples. At the lowest metal coverage (3 x 10 atoms/cm ),... 

TEM is a direct analysis tool for knowing if metal clusters are present in catalytic solutions. This technique permits to define the size, structure, morphology and state of aggregation of the metal particles [11]. Hence, this technique can be in particular useful to identify nanoclusters in metal-catalysed reactions, using molecular complexes as catalytic precursors. But the catalytic activity of these observed nanoclusters must be further checked. 

It has been noticed moreover that in metal cluster chemistry a difference in quality is observed when the sizes of the clusters being progressively characterized are... 

The jellium model of the free-electron gas can account for the increased abundance of alkali metal clusters of a certain size which are observed in mass spectroscopy experiments. This occurrence of so-called magic numbers is related directly to the electronic shell structure of the atomic clusters. Rather than solving the Schrodinger equation self-consistently for jellium clusters, we first consider the two simpler problems of a free-electron gas that is confined either within a sphere of radius, R, or within a cubic box of edge length, L (cf. problem 28 of Sutton (1993)). This corresponds to imposing hard-wall boundary conditions on the electrons, namely... 

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