Issue 14, 2023

Bridging the gas and condensed phases for metal-atom encapsulating silicon- and germanium-cage superatoms: electrical properties of assembled superatoms

Abstract

With the development of nanocluster (NC) synthesis methods in the gas phase, atomically precise NCs composed of a finite number of metal and semiconductor atoms have emerged. NCs are expected to be the smallest units for nanomaterials with various functions, such as catalysts, optoelectronic materials, and electromagnetic devices. The exploration of a stable NC called a magic number NC has revealed a couple of important factors, such as a highly symmetric geometric structure and an electronic shell closure, and a magic number behavior is often enhanced by mixing additional elements. A synergetic effect between geometric and electronic structures leads to the formation of chemically robust NC units called superatoms (SAs), which act as individual units assembled as thin films. The agglomeration of non-ligated bare SAs is desirable in fabricating the assembled SAs associated with intrinsic SA nature. The recent development of an intensive pulsed magnetron sputtering method opens up the scalable synthesis of SAs in the gas phase, enabling the fabrication of SA assembly coupled with the non-destructive deposition of a soft-landing technique. This perspective describes our recent progress in the investigation of the formation of binary cage SA (BCSA) assembled thin films composed of metal-atom encapsulating silicon-cage SAs (M@Si16) and germanium-cage SAs (M@Ge16), with a focus on their electrical properties associated with a conduction mechanism toward the development of new functional nanoscale materials.

Graphical abstract: Bridging the gas and condensed phases for metal-atom encapsulating silicon- and germanium-cage superatoms: electrical properties of assembled superatoms

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Perspective
Submitted
09 jan 2023
Accepted
01 mar 2023
First published
03 mar 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2023,25, 9738-9752

Bridging the gas and condensed phases for metal-atom encapsulating silicon- and germanium-cage superatoms: electrical properties of assembled superatoms

T. Yokoyama and A. Nakajima, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2023, 25, 9738 DOI: 10.1039/D3CP00120B

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