Geometrical, electronic, and magnetic properties of CunFe (n=1–12) clusters: A density functional study

Abstract

The geometrical, electronic, and magnetic properties of small CunFe (n=1–12) clusters have been investigated by using density functional method B3LYP and LanL2DZ basis set. The structural search reveals that Fe atoms in low-energy CunFe isomers tend to occupy the position with the maximum coordination number. The ground state CunFe clusters possess planar structure for n=2–5 and three-dimensional (3D) structure for n=6–12. The electronic properties of CunFe clusters are analyzed through the averaged binding energy, the second-order energy difference and HOMO–LUMO energy gap. It is found that the magic numbers of stability are 1, 3, 7 and 9 for the ground state CunFe clusters. The energy gap of Fe-encapsulated cage clusters is smaller than that of other configurations. The Cu5Fe and Cu7Fe clusters have a very large energy gap (>2.4eV). The vertical ionization potential (VIP), electron affinity (EA) and photoelectron spectra are also calculated and simulated theoretically for all the ground-state clusters. The magnetic moment analyses for the ground-state CunFe clusters show that Fe atom can enhance the magnetic moment of the host cluster and carries most of the total magnetic moment.