Structures, Stabilities, and Electronic Properties of Small-Sized Zr2Si n (n=1–11) Clusters: A Density Functional Study

Ab initio methods based on density functional theory at B3LYP level have been applied in investigating the equilibrium geometries, growth patterns, relative stabilities, and electronic properties of Zr2-doped Si n clusters. The optimisation results shown that the lowest-energy configurations for Zr2Si n clusters do not keep the corresponding silicon framework unchanged, which reflects that the doped Zr atoms dramatically affect the most stable structures of the Si n clusters. By analysing the relative stabilities, it is found that the doping of zirconium atoms reduces the chemical stabilities of silicon host. The Zr2Si4 and Zr2Si7 clusters are the magic numbers. The natural population and natural electronic configuration analyses indicated that the Zr atoms possess positive charge for n=1–6 and negative charge for n=7–11. In addition, the chemical hardness, chemical potential, infrared, and Raman spectra are also discussed.