2010/10/21 by Jian Qin, Thomas A. Witten, Nathan W. Krapf
Chemistry · Engineering · Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Binary number #Binding energy #Charge (physics) #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Cluster (spacecraft) #Electrostatics #Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications #Logarithm #Materials science #Mathematics #Metal #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Molecular physics #Nanoparticle #Physics #Quantum #Quantum dot #Quantum mechanics #SPHERES #Semiconductor #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.93.022603
published as Phys. Rev. E 93, 022603 (2016) · 22 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1010.4488
arxiv created 2016/01/08 · openalex publication_date 2016/02/10 · arxiv updated 2016/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The binding of clusters of metal nanoparticles is partly electrostatic. We address difficulties in calculating the electrostatic energy when high charging energies limit the total charge to a single quantum, entailing unequal potentials on the particles. We show that the energy at small separation h has a singular logarithmic dependence on h. We derive a general form for this energy in terms of the singular capacitance of two spheres in near contact c(h), together with nonsingular geometric features of the cluster. Using this form, we determine the energies of various clusters, finding that more compact clusters are more stable. These energies are proposed to be significant for metal-semiconductor binary nanoparticle lattices found experimentally. We sketch how these effects should dictate the relative abundances of metal nanoparticle clusters in nonpolar solvents.