Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Theoretical Design Of Stable Small Aluminium-Magnesium Binary Clusters, Edison Osorio, Alejandro Vasquez, Elizabeth Florez, Fanor Mondragon, Kelling J. Donald, William Tiznado

Chemistry Faculty Publications

We explore in detail the potential energy surfaces of the Al_xMg_y (x, y = 1–4) systems as case studies to test the utility and limitations of simple rules based on electron counts and the phenomenological shell model (PSM) for bimetallic clusters. We find that it is feasible to design stable structures that are members of this set of small Al–Mg binary clusters, using simple electron count rules, including the classical 4n + 2 Hückel model, and the most recently proposed PSM. The thermodynamic stability of the title compounds has been evaluated using several different descriptors, including …