Exploration of Free Energy Surface of the Au10 Nanocluster at Finite Temperature

TL;DR

This study explores how temperature affects the structure and bonding of Au10 nanoclusters, revealing that planar shapes dominate at certain temperatures and that bonding relies on specific electron orbitals.

Contribution

The novelty lies in computing the free energy surface and thermal properties of Au10 clusters at finite temperatures using DFT and advanced bonding analysis methods.

Findings

The 2D elongated hexagon configuration dominates the thermal population of Au10 clusters between 50–800 K.

The lowest energy structure computed with DFT differs from that at the DLPNO-CCSD(T) level of theory.

Bonding in Au10 clusters is primarily due to 6s electrons, with no contribution from d orbitals.

Abstract

The first step in comprehending the properties of Au10 clusters is understanding the lowest energy structure at low and high temperatures. Functional materials operate at finite temperatures; however, energy computations employing density functional theory (DFT) methodology are typically carried out at zero temperature, leaving many properties unexplored. This study explored the potential and free energy surface of the neutral Au10 nanocluster at a finite temperature, employing a genetic algorithm coupled with DFT and nanothermodynamics. Furthermore, we computed the thermal population and infrared Boltzmann spectrum at a finite temperature and compared it with the validated experimental data. Moreover, we performed the chemical bonding analysis using the quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) approach and the adaptive natural density partitioning method (AdNDP) to shed light on the bonding of Au atoms in the low-energy structures. In the calculations, we take into consideration the relativistic effects through the zero-order regular approximation (ZORA), the dispersion through Grimme’s dispersion with Becke–Johnson damping (D3BJ), and we employed nanothermodynamics to consider temperature contributions. Small Au clusters prefer the planar shape, and the transition from 2D to 3D could take place at atomic clusters consisting of ten atoms, which could be affected by temperature, relativistic effects, and dispersion. We analyzed the energetic ordering of structures calculated using DFT with ZORA and single-point energy calculation employing the DLPNO-CCSD(T) methodology. Our findings indicate that the planar lowest energy structure computed with DFT is not the lowest energy structure computed at the DLPN0-CCSD(T) level of theory. The computed thermal population indicates that the 2D elongated hexagon configuration strongly dominates at a temperature range of 50–800 K. Based on the thermal population, at a temperature of 100 K, the computed IR Boltzmann spectrum agrees with the experimental IR spectrum. The chemical bonding analysis on the lowest energy structure indicates that the cluster bond is due only to the electrons of the 6 s orbital, and the Au d orbitals do not participate in the bonding of this system.

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