Electronic structures and reactivities of monometallic and bimetallic clusters of Au and Cu

Abstract

The variation of the Au 4f binding energy of Au clusters with the cluster size has been established by measuring the binding energies of clusters whose size distributions were independently determined by HREM and STM. The binding energy increases significantly when the cluster size is ~2 nm. Au-Cu bimetallic clusters of the composition Cu₃Au have been deposited for the first time on carbon substrates. The shifts in the core level binding energies of the bimetallic clusters show the effect of alloying in the case of large clusters, but show effects of both alloying and cluster size in the case of the small clusters. The interaction of CO with Cu₃Au clusters is stronger than with a bulk Cu metal. The interaction of CO with small Cu clusters also seems to be stronger than with bulk Cu or with large Cu clusters.