Structure and properties

Clusters with icosahedral structures

Clusters of atoms bound by van der Waals forces or by other simple forces that depend only on the distance between each pair of atoms have unusual stability when the cluster has exactly the number of atoms needed to form a regular icosahedron. The first three clusters in this series have, respectively, 13, 55, and 147 atoms. These are shown in Figure 3. In the 13-atom cluster, all but one of the atoms occupy equivalent sites. The 55-atom cluster in this series consists of a core—which is just the 13-atom icosahedron—plus 12 more atoms atop the 12 vertices of the icosahedron and 30 more atoms, one in the centre of each of the 30 edges of the icosahedron. The 147-atom cluster consists of a 55-atom icosahedral core, 12 more atoms at the vertices of the outermost shell, one atom in the centre of each of the 20 faces, and two atoms along each of the 30 edges between the vertices. The shell structure that provides special stabilities in this class of clusters is determined by the individual stabilities of the shells of the atoms themselves.

Clusters of simple metal atoms

A different kind of extraordinary stability manifests itself in clusters of simple metal atoms. The shell structure for this class of clusters is determined by the electrons and the filling of those shells that have energy states available to the electrons. The numbers of electrons corresponding to closed electron shells in metal clusters are 8, 20, 40, 58, . . . . The electron structure can be modeled by supposing that the positively charged cores consisting of the protons and inner-shell electrons of all the cluster’s atoms are smeared out into a continuous, attractive background, while the valence, or outer-shell, electrons are delocalized (i.e., shared among all atoms in the cluster). The electron environment is much like a well or pit with a flat bottom and a moderately steep wall. The determination of the energy states available for electrons in such a simplified model system is relatively easy and gives a good description of clusters of more than about eight or nine alkali atoms—i.e., lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, or cesium. The single valence, or outer-shell, electron of each alkali atom is treated explicitly, while all the others are considered part of the smeared-out core. Since each alkali atom has only one valence electron, the unusually stable clusters of alkalis consist of 8, 20, 40, . . . atoms, corresponding to major shell closings. This model is not as successful in treating metals such as aluminum, which have more than one valence electron.

Network structures

Still another kind of particularly stable closed shell occurs in clusters sometimes called network structures. The best-known of these is C₆₀, the 60-atom cluster of carbon atoms. In this cluster the atoms occupy the sites of the 60 equivalent vertices of the soccer ball structure, which can be constructed by cutting off the 12 vertices of the icosahedron to make 12 regular 5-sided (regular pentagonal) faces. The icosahedron itself has 20 triangular faces; when its vertices are sliced off, the triangles become hexagons. The 12 pentagons share their edges with these 20 hexagonal faces. No two pentagons have any common edge in this molecule or cluster (C₆₀ may be considered either). The resulting high-symmetry structure has been named buckminsterfullerene, after R. Buckminster Fuller, who advocated using such geometric structures in architectural design (see Figure 4).

Other network compounds of carbon are also known. To form a closed-shell structure, a network compound of carbon must have exactly 12 rings of 5 carbon atoms, but the number of rings of 6 carbon atoms is variable. Shells smaller than C₆₀ have been discovered, but some of their constituent pentagons must share edges; this makes the smaller network compounds less stable than C₆₀. Shells larger than C₆₀, such as C₇₀, C₇₆, and C₈₄, are known and are relatively stable. Even tubes and “onions” of concentric layers of carbon shells have been reported in observations made with modern electron microscopes known as scanning tunneling microscopes. These devices are powerful enough to reveal images of extremely small clusters and even individual foreign atoms deposited on clean surfaces.

The network compounds of carbon, which make up the class called fullerenes, form compounds with alkali and other metals. Some of these compounds of fullerenes combined with metals, such as K₃C₆₀, become superconductors at low temperatures; that is to say, they lose all resistance to electric current flow when they are cooled sufficiently. The class of network compounds as a group had been imagined from time to time, but only in the late 1980s were they realized in the laboratory and shown to have closed-shell network structures.