title: Insulating or metallic: coexistence of different electronic phases in zinc clusters.
abstract: How many of the several attributes of the bulk metallic state persist in a nanoparticle containing a finite number of atoms of a metallic element? Do all those attributes emerge suddenly at a well-defined cluster size or do they rather evolve at different rates and in a broad size range? These fundamental questions have been addressed through a conjoint experimental/theoretical investigation of zinc clusters. We report the observation of novel coexistence phenomena involving different electronic phases: for some sizes, metallic and insulating electronic states coexist within a single, Janus-like, nanoparticle; for the rest of sizes, we report the coexistence of two weakly interacting metallic phases with different dimensionalities, localized at the shell and the core of the nanoparticle. These fascinating features are due to an anomalously long core-shell separation that equips the shell and core regions with largely independent structural, vibrational, and thermal properties.
authors.affiliation: Department of Theoretical, Atomic and Optical Physics, University of Valladolid, Valladolid 47071 (Spain). aguado@metodos.fam.cie.uva.es.
authors.forename: Andrés
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aguado
authors.forename: Andrés
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vega
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lebon
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: von Issendorff
keywords: corrosion-protecting coatings; insulating states; metallic states; zinc clusters