Evidence of hollow golden cages

doi:10.1073/pnas.0600637103

Evidence of hollow golden cages

*Department of Chemistry and Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588;
^†Department of Physics, Washington State University, 2710 University Drive, Richland, WA 99354; and
^‡Chemical Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, MS K8-88, P.O. Box 999, Richland, WA 99352

Edited by Benjamin Widom, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved April 7, 2006 (received for review January 24, 2006)

Abstract

The fullerenes are the first “free-standing” elemental hollow cages identified by spectroscopy experiments and synthesized in the bulk. Here, we report experimental and theoretical evidence of hollow cages consisting of pure metal atoms, Au_n ⁻ (n = 16–18); to our knowledge, free-standing metal hollow cages have not been previously detected in the laboratory. These hollow golden cages (“bucky gold”) have an average diameter >5.5 Å, which can easily accommodate one guest atom inside.

Footnotes

^¶To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: ls.wang{at}pnl.gov or xczeng{at}phase2.unl.edu
↵ ^§Present address: Rowland Institute at Harvard, 100 Edwin H. Land Boulevard, Cambridge, MA 02142.
Author contributions: S.B., L.-S.W., and X.C.Z. designed research; S.B., X.L., L.-S.W., and X.C.Z. performed research; L.-S.W. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; S.B., X.L., L.-S.W., and X.C.Z. analyzed data; and L.-S.W. and X.C.Z. wrote the paper.
Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.
This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
Abbreviations:

Abbreviations:

DFT,

density-functional theory;

PES,

photoelectron spectroscopy;

VDE,

vertical detachment energy.