An Introduction to Cluster Science E-Book

Phuong Mai Dinh

• Herausgeber: Wiley-VCH
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 346

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Filling the need for a solid textbook, this short primer in cluster science is ideal for a one-semester lecture for advanced undergraduate students. It is based on a series of lectures given by the well-established and recognized authors for the past ten years. The book covers both the basics of the domain as well as up-to-date developments. It can be divided roughly into two parts. The first three chapters introduce basic concepts of cluster science. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction, complemented by chapter 2 on experimental and chapter 3 on theoretical aspects. The second half of the book is devoted to a systematic presentation of free cluster properties, and to a thorough discussion of the impact of clusters in other domains of science. These explicitly worked-out links between cluster physics and other research areas are unique both in terms of fundamental aspects and of applications, and cannot be found elsewhere in the literature. Also suitable for researchers outside of the field looking for an introduction to cluster science.

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Units

1 Clusters in Nature

1.1 Atoms, Molecules and Bulk

1.2 A New State of Matter?

2 Measuring Clusters

2.1 Cluster Production

2.2 Excitations of a Cluster

2.3 Measuring Cluster Properties

3 How to Describe Clusters

3.1 Approximations for the Ions

3.2 Approximation Chain for Electrons

3.3 Approximation Chain for the Ion–Electron Coupling

3.4 Observables

4 Some Properties of Free Clusters

4.1 Ionic and Electronic Structure

4.2 Optical Response

4.3 Photoinduced Electron Emission

4.4 Cluster Nonlinear Dynamics

5 Clusters in Contact with Other Materials

5.1 Embedded and/or Deposited Clusters

5.2 On the Description of Embedded/Deposited Clusters

5.3 Clusters and Nanosystems

6 Links to Other Areas of Science

6.1 Clusters in the Family of Finite Fermion Systems

6.2 Clusters in Astrophysics

6.3 Clusters in Climate

6.4 Clusters in Biological Systems

7 Conclusion

Further Reading

References

Index

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Authors

Phuong Mai Dinh

Université Paul Sabatier

Laboratoire de Physique Théorique

Toulouse

France

Paul-Gerhard Reinhard

Universität Erlangen

Institut für Theoretische Physik

Erlangen

Germany

Eric Suraud

Université Paul Sabatier

Laboratoire de Physique Théorique

Toulouse

France

Cover Design

Physics meets art: The background of the cover represents a detail of a church window (© jorisvo/fotolia.com). The shining colors of church windows reflect their content in metallic particles, in modern words metallic nanoclusters.

Physics meets biology: illustrative example of gold nanoclusters attached to a DNA molecule. The presence of nobel metal nanoparticles in biological environments results in significant radiobiological and immunological effects the essential physical insights into which could be obtained through the molecular dynamics simulations, see http://www.mbnexplorer.com/.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty can be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The Advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Boschstr. 12, 69469 Weinheim, Germany

Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing.

All rights reserved (including those of translation into other languages). No part of this book may be reproduced in any form – by photoprinting, microfilm, or any other means – nor transmitted or translated into a machine language without written permission from the publishers. Registered names, trademarks, etc. used in this book, even when not specifically marked as such, are not to be considered unprotected by law.

Hardcover ISBN 978-3-527-41246-4

Softcover ISBN 978-3-527-41118-4

ePub ISBN 978-3-527-67570-8

Mobi ISBN 978-3-527-67569-2

To Philippe, Elisabeth, and Evelyne

Preface

Cluster science developed as an independent branch of science only a few decades ago. Since then its remarkable achievements have turned it into a major branch of science bridging the gap between microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Cluster science joins efforts from physicists and chemists and has led to impressive technological developments, opening the door to the nanoworld. It is now an established field of research with an impressive network of connections to neighboring scientific domains such as material science, but also to more remote ones such as, in particular, biology. We aim in this short book at addressing both these aspects, first, presenting cluster science as such, and second, indicating the connections to other fields of research.

Cluster science: a young field with a long history and a promising future Clusters were recognized in technological applications well before they were identified as physical objects. It was well known to Roman craftsmen and into the Middle Ages that immersing small pieces of a noble metal into a glass allowed for beautiful colors to then reside within the glass. More recently, photography became possible when realizing that small aggregates, namely “small” pieces of matter, of AgBr had a remarkable sensitivity to light, which with a proper chemical treatment, allowed to record and print images. However, over these many centuries, the idea of clusters as a subject of scientific research remained absent. One major reason was that one did not know how to isolate and to identify such microscopically small objects from a carrier environment, for example a glass in the Middle Ages, or more recently a gel. It has only been during the last quarter of the twentieth century that researchers have succeeded in producing in a controlled manner aggregates of various (controlled) sizes, thus opening the door to dedicated studies of clusters, also known as nanoparticles. For example, studies of clusters of various sizes allowed for the first time to systematically track the transition between atom/molecule and a bulk material. Within a few decades, cluster physics has become a lively domain of research, and has “invaded” many other domains where it is now fully admitted that clusters do play a major role. As typical examples, let us cite the many potential applications of nanosystems in material science in the race for miniaturization, as well as in medicine for drug delivery and imaging. We could also mention astrophysics with the composition of the interstellar medium, or climate science with aerosols. Cluster science has thus a promising future which motivates us to present its many facets in this book. Thereby we try to stay at an introductory level to address a broad readership.

Cluster science: a merger between physics and chemistry Clusters are constituted from atoms and interpolate between small molecules and bulk materials. As such, they thus call for expertise from chemistry – chemistry of small molecules but also solid-state chemistry – as well as from physics – atomic and molecular physics and solid-state physics. Indeed, the cluster community formed as a merger between various fields of physics and chemistry, including researchers involved in the study of other finite systems, such as nuclei or helium droplets. From this somewhat heterogeneous background emerged an original and rich scientific field primarily dedicated to the study of clusters themselves. Cluster science indeed developed over the last few decades into a somewhat specific domain. The study of clusters themselves made tremendous progress, reaching now in some cases a remarkable degree of detail, for example, even a time-resolved account of the dynamical response to a dedicated excitation. This high degree of detail was made possible partly because of the growing versatility of lasers over the same period of time and to the fact that clusters may have a strong coupling to light, especially clusters made out of metallic material. We will see many examples along that line throughout this book, both in the study of clusters themselves as well as in applications to other fields.

Cluster science: an interface between many domains A fascinating aspect of cluster science is that clusters play a role in several somewhat unexpected scenarios. This holds, for example, in astrophysics where it was recently realized that the composition of cosmic dust is “full” of clusters, whose influence on light signals received on earth may be crucial. But this also holds in terms of applications, for example, in drug delivery on specific targets in the human body. But they may be essential building blocks of new materials as well. The range of “applications” is thus enormous, from the largest times and distances in the universe to nanosized devices and materials, with an excursion into mesoscopic constituents of living cells in the human body. These apparently remote domains of scientific knowledge happen to share common objects, namely clusters. It is thus certainly an important issue to understand the properties of these fascinating objects.

The aim of this book is to introduce the reader to these many aspects of cluster science. The domain is huge and cannot be covered in depth within the limited size of the present book which should be an introductory text. It nonetheless indicates the wide range of cluster physics. We thus have confined the presentation to the basic aspects of clusters, being well aware that some aspects and many details are missing. This book is not meant to be an exhaustive review but rather a survey to motivate the reader to go deeper into the material. We have thus tried to supply relevant citations, mostly to textbooks or review papers and, when found helpful, to the proper specific citation. A strong underlying idea was to precisely cover general characteristics, often on a schematic basis, as well as some actual recent scientific results in order to enlighten the ever-developing nature of the field. The book thus consists of two parts of about equal size. The first half of the book (Chapters 1 to 3) includes a general introduction and provides the basic notions and keywords in experiments and theory. These notions should suffice for further reading of papers in the field. The last three chapters (Chapters 4 to 6) gather a collection of illustrative results. These chapters cover both properties of clusters themselves and their applications in various domains of science from astrophysics to material science and biology.

A book is always the result of numerous interactions with many colleagues. It is obvious that our project would not have converged without these many interactions. We would thus like to acknowledge the help of all these colleagues and tell them how much they helped, long ago or more recently, both in terms of science and personal contacts. We would, in particular, like to mention here: E. Artacho, M. Bär, M. Belkacem, D. Berger, G.F. Bertsch, S. Bjornholm, C. Bordas, M. Brack, F. Calvayrac, B. and M. Farizon, F. Fehrer, T. Fennel, G. Gerber, E. Giglio, C. Guet, B. von Issendorf, H. Haberl, J.M. L’Hermite, P. Klüpfel, U. Kreibig, J. Kohanoff, C. Kohl, S. Kümmel, E. Krotscheck, P. Labastie, F. Lépine, F. Marquardt, K.-H. Meiwes-Broer, B. Montag, M. Moseler, J. Navarro, V. Nesterenko, A. Pohl, L. Sanche, L. Serra, R. Schmidt, A. Solov’yov, F. Spiegelman, F. Stienkemeier, J. Tiggesbäumker, C. Toepffer, C. Ullrich, R. Vuilleumier, Z.P. Wang, P. Wopperer, F.S. Zhang, and G. Zwicknagel. Finally we would like to mention that this book emerges from a long-standing collaboration between the authors. This would not have been possible without the help of funding from the French–German exchange program PROCOPE, the Institut Universitaire de France, and the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation. We are thankful to these institutions to have supported us in our common efforts.

Toulouse

Erlangen

Toulouse

Phuong Mai Dinh,Paul-Gerhard Reinhard andEric Suraud

March 2013

Units

We list here a few basic physical constants and units (data taken from [1]). We use the Gaussian system of units for electromagnetic properties (dielectric constant ).

In dynamics, one simultaneously treats energy, distance and time scales, so that one has to consider proper combinations of these three quantities. Some standard packages are:

1

Clusters in Nature

Clusters, also called nanoparticles, are special molecules. They are composed from the same building blocks, atoms or small molecules, stacked in any desired amount. This is similar to a bulk crystal. In fact, one may view clusters as small pieces of bulk material. It has only been within the past few decades that clusters have come into the focus of intense investigations. During these few decades, cluster science has developed into an extremely rich and promising field of research. As often in science, technological applications of clusters existed before they were identified and understood. One of the most famous and oldest examples of the application of clusters in technology is the coloring of glass by immersing small gold clusters into the glass itself. The process allowed for some tuning of colors depending on the inclusions’ size. This technology dates back to Roman times, where there is evidence craftmen had perfectly mastered this versatile technique. In scientific terms, such a phenomenon just reflects the size dependence of the optical response (that is, the color) of gold clusters in a glass matrix (although that prosaic formulation certainly does not give sufficient credit to the marvelous impressions attained that way). Another example of early applications is found in traditional photography which started about two centuries ago. The emulsion of a photographic film contains a dense distribution of AgCl (later AgBr) clusters whose special optical properties allowed to store information from light impulses and to visualize it later by chemical reduction. Progress in sensitivity and resolution was tightly bound in properly handling the cluster properties, where for a long time photographers did not even know that they were dealing, in fact, with clusters.