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Surface-reconstructed icosahedral structures for lead clusters

Shaun C. Hendy and Jonathan P. K. Doye

Phys. Rev. B 66, 235402 (2002)

Abstract

We describe a family of icosahedral structures for lead clusters. In general, structures in this family contain a Mackay icosahedral core with a reconstructed two-shell outer-layer. This family includes the anti-Mackay icosahedra, which have have a Mackay icosahedral core but with most of the surface atoms in hexagonal close-packed positions. Using a many-body glue potential for lead, we identify two icosahedral structures in this family which have the lowest energies of any known structure in the size range from 900 to 15000 lead atoms. We show that these structures are stabilized by a feature of the many-body glue part of the interatomic potential.


The full paper is available from Physical Review B Online and the Los Alamos preprint server (and mirrors: UK, France, Germany).