GLOBAL MINIMA FOR PdN (N = 5–80) CLUSTERS DESCRIBED BY SUTTON–CHEN POTENTIAL

Abstract

The structure and energetics of Pd N (N = 5–80) clusters have been studied extensively by a Monte Carlo method based on Sutton–Chen many-body potential. The basin-hopping algorithm is used to find the low-energy minima on the potential energy surface for each nuclearity. A variety of structure types (icosahedral, decahedral and fcc closed-packed) are observed for Pd clusters. Some of the icosahedral global minima do not have a central atom. The resulting structures have been compared with the previous theoretical results.