Knowledge of the structure of clusters is essential to predict many of their physical and chemical properties. Using a many-body semiempirical Gupta potential (to perform global minimizations), and first-principles density functional calculations (to confirm the energy ordering of the local minima), we have recently found [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1600 (1998)] that there are many intermediate-size disordered gold nanoclusters with energy near or below the lowest-energy ordered structure. This is especially surprising because we studied “magic” cluster sizes, for which very compact-ordered structures exist. Here, we show how the analysis of the local stress can be used to understand the physical origin of this amorphization. We find that the compact ordered structures, which are very stable for pair potentials, are destabilized by the tendency of metallic bonds to contract at the surface, because of the decreased coordination. The amorphization is also favored by the relatively low energy associated to bondlength and coordination disorder in metals. Although these are very general properties of metallic bonding, we find that they are especially important in the case of gold, and we predict some general trends in the tendency of metallic clusters towards amorphous structures.

• Received 25 August 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.61.5771