Evolution of Co n Al clusters and chemisorption of hydrogen on Co n Al clusters

Abstract

The growth behavior of ConAl (n = 1–15) and the chemisorptions of hydrogen on the ground state geometries have been studied using the density functional theory (DFT) within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The growth pattern for ConAl is Al-substituted Con+1 clusters, and it keeps the similar frameworks of the most stable Con+1 clusters except for n = 2, 3, and 6. The Al atom substitutes the surface atom of the Con+1 clusters for n ≤ 13. Starting from n = 14, the Al atom completely falls into the center of the Co-frame. The dissociation energy, the second-order energy differences, and the HOMO–LUMO gaps indicate that the magic numbers of the calculated ConAl clusters are 7, 9, and 13, corresponding to the high symmetrical structures. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a systematic study of chemisorption of hydrogen on cobalt aluminum clusters. The twofold bridge site is identified to be the most favorable chemisorptions site for one hydrogen adsorption on ConAl (n = 1–6, 8, 10), and two hydrogen adsorption on ConAl (n = 1–7), while threefold hollow site is preferred for one hydrogen adsorption on ConAl (n = 7, 9, 11–15) and two hydrogen adsorption on ConAl (n = 8–10, 12–15) clusters. The ground state structure of two hydrogen adsorption on Co11Al is exceptional. In general, the binding energy of both H and 2H of ConAl (n = 1–12) is found to increase with the cluster size. And the result shows that large binding energies of the hydrogen atoms and large fragmentation energies for Co11AlH and Co12AlH make these species behaving like magic clusters.