Energetics of metal slabs and clusters: The rectangular-box model

Abstract

An expansion of energy characteristics of wide thin slab of thickness L in power of 1/L is constructed using the free-electron approximation and the model of a potential well of finite depth. Accuracy of results in each order of the expansion is analyzed. Size dependences of the work function and electronic elastic force for Au and Na slabs are calculated. It is concluded that the work function of low-dimensional metal structure is always smaller that of semi-infinite metal sample.A mechanism for the Coulomb instability of charged metal clusters, different from Rayleigh's one, is discussed. The two-component model of a metallic cluster yields the different critical sizes depending on a kind of charging particles (electrons or ions). For the cuboid clusters, the electronic spectrum quantization is taken into account. The calculated critical sizes of Ag 2− N and Au 3− N clusters are in a good agreement with experimental data. A qualitative explanation is suggested for the Coulomb explosion of positively charged Na n+ N clusters at 3≤ n ≤5.

Effects of level broadening and electron overheating in tunneling structures based on metal clusters

“…The additional small quantity δ is caused by an increase of radius of the charging electron "cloud". For gold δ is equal approximately to 1.8 a 0 [39]. The most obvious example is the case of a disc, since almost half of the disc surface contacts to the dielectric film with ǫ = 3.…”

“…where U 0 < 0 is the position of conductivity band of a semi-infinite metal [39], k ⊥ is a solution of wave equation for radial direction. Quantization of the wave number k nz along the cylinder axis is determined by the solution of the equation:…”

Formation of Metallic Electrical Conduction in Films of Vacuum Condensates of Metals

“…[17][18][19][20][21]. Таким чином з аналізу теоретичних робіт можна зробити висновок, що в суцільних плівках металів з кубічною кристалічною ґратни-цею товщиною більшою за 5 атомних шарів електронна будова іде-нтична електронній структурі масивних металів.…”

Effect of dielectric confinement on energetics of quantum metal films

“…There are different methods, which enable one to calculate electron structure of slabs consisting of few monoatomic layers. Let us combine them into three groups according to the complexity of computations: I -the Sommerfeld electrons in-a-box model (analytical calculations, slabs and wires) [10][11][12][13][14][15]; II -self-consistent calculations within various versions of jellium model (slabs and wires) [16][17][18][19][20]; IIIab initio calculations (slabs) [21][22][23][24]. The obtained results are illustrated in figure 1 for all these three groups.…”