Localized States of an Excess Electron in an Ionic Cluster

Abstract

A theory of an electron affinity for an ionic cluster is proposed both in a quasiclassical approach and with quantization of a polarization electric field in a nanoparticle. A critical size of the cluster regarding in formation of an electron's autolocalized state, dependencies of energy and radius of a polaron on a cluster's size are obtained by a variational method. It has been found that binding energy of the electron in the cluster depends on a cluster's radius but a radius of electron's auto-localization does not depend on the cluster's radius and it equals to the polaron radius in a corresponding infinity crystal. A bound state of the electron in a cluster is possible only if the cluster's radius is more than the polaron radius.