"Magic melters" have geometrical origin

Abstract

Recent experimental reports bring out extreme size sensitivity in the heat capacities of gallium and aluminum clusters. In the present work we report results of our extensive ab initio molecular dynamical simulations on Ga₃₀ and Ga₃₁, the pair which has shown rather dramatic size sensitivity. We trace the origin of this size sensitive heat capacities to the relative order in their respective ground state geometries. Such an effect of nature of the ground state on the characteristics of heat capacity is also seen in case of small gallium and sodium clusters, indicating that the observed size sensitivity is a generic feature of small clusters.