Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) introduces to all lecturers, students, and people who are interested in a new research result of TDTU named "Au19M (M = Cr, Mn, and Fe) as magnetic copies of the golden pyramid ". This study has been published in the well-known journal – Scientific Reports, belonging to the Nature publisher. Scientific Reports is an ISI Journal, with an Impact Factor (IF) of 4,259 according to the Web of Knowledge (US) and an H-index of 104 according to SJR (Spain).
The main author of this work is Dr. Nguyen Minh Tam, assistant professor of the Computational Chemistry Research Group at TDTU. This publication is the result of a long-term and very elaborate research due to high requirements of Scientific Reports which accepts only pioneering research papers.
The previous studies reported that Au20 possesses a perfect pyramidal structure (Td) with a considerably large highest occupied molecular orbital-lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (HOMO-LUMO) energy gap of 1.77 eV, suggesting its remarkably high stability and offering a potential platform for optical and catalytic nanostructured materials. Although there has been some progress on the structural features and catalytic behavior of doped 20-atom gold clusters, the role of impurities in tailoring the magnetic properties of Au20 has been far less understood. Considering the fact that Cr, Mn, and Fe are interesting magnetic elements due to their unpaired valence electrons, the interaction between these impurities and host electrons is expected to trigger essential changes in the magnetism of 20 atom gold clusters.
Motivated by that idea, Dr. Nguyen Minh Tam and his colleagues carried out a theoretical study on the structure, stability and magnetic properties of Au19M clusters (M = Cr, Mn, and Fe) using density function theory (DFT). The studied clusters prefer forming magnetic versions of the unique tetrahedral Au20. Stable sextet Au19Cr is identified as the least reactive species and can be qualified as a “magnetic superatom”. Analysis on cluster electronic structures shows that the competition between localized and delocalized electronic states governs the stability and magnetic properties of Au19M clusters.
Dr. Nguyen Minh Tam is one of the “rising stars” of TDTU. He defended Ph.D thesis in Computational Chemistry at KU Leuven University (Belgium) which is currently ranked the 71st in the world. In May, 2017, he was appointed to be TDTU’s research assistant professor. Up to now, Dr. Nguyen Minh Tam has published 31 articles in prestigious ISI journals.
Reference: Nguyen Minh Tam, Ngo Tuan Cuong, Hung Tan Pham, Nguyen Thanh Tung (2017); Au19M (M=Cr, Mn, and Fe) as magnetic copies of the golden pyramid; SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, Volume: 7, Article Number: 16086, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-16412-3, Published: NOV 222017.
