Structures and Energetics of Platinum–Cobalt Bimetallic Clusters

Abstract

Platinum–cobalt bimetallic clusters (N=11–15) were modeled by a many-body Sutton-Chen (SC) potential. The basin-hopping algorithm and Monte Carlo (MC) energy minimization were used to determine the global minima of bimetallic clusters. The structural changes with cluster size were observed. Most of the structures had built on icosahedral packing. Second energy difference analyzes were performed to investigate the relative stability of a cluster with respect to its size and composition. The dependence of energetics and structures on size and composition is discussed.

Keywords:

• Platinum–cobalt bimetallic cluster
• Basin-hopping algorithm
• Sutton-Chen potential
• Nanoclusters

Acknowledgements

Y.H. Chui acknowledges a studentship from the University of Hong Kong for his postgraduate study. The authors also thank Dr David Wales (University of Cambridge, UK) for access to GMIN (Basin-hopping global optimization) program and Professor S.K. Lai (National Central University, Taiwan) for useful discussion on this project. This work was funded by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong (HKU 7072/01P).