TY - JOUR
T1 - Chiral symmetry breaking yields the I-Au60 perfect golden shell of singular rigidity
AU - Mullins, S. M.
AU - Weissker, H. Ch
AU - Sinha-Roy, R.
AU - Pelayo, J. J.
AU - Garzón, I. L.
AU - Whetten, R. L.
AU - López-Lozano, X.
N1 - Funding Information:
R.L.W. acknowledges support from Welch Foundation Grant #AX-1857. I.L.G. acknowledges support from DGAPA-UNAM under Project PAPIIT IN108817, CONACYT-México under Project 285821, and DGTIC-UNAM Supercomputing Center under Project LANCAD-UNAM-DGTIC-049. H.C.W. acknowledges support from the French Research Agency (Agence National de Recherche, ANR) in the frame of the project “FIT SPRINGS”, ANR-14-CE08-0009 and HPC resources from GENCI-IDRIS (Grant 2016-096829). X.L.L. acknowledges previous funding from NSF-DMR-1103730 and NSF-PREM DMR-0934218. This work received computational support from the Laboratory of Computational Nanotechnology and UTSA Research Computing Support Group through the HPC clusters Antares3 and SHAMU, respectively, as well as the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. R.S.-R. acknowledges support from the A*MIDEX Grant (No. ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) funded by the French Government “Investissements d’Avenir” program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - The combination of profound chirality and high symmetry on the nm-scale is unusual and would open exciting avenues, both fundamental and applied. Here we show how the unique electronic structure and bonding of quasi-2D gold makes this possible. We report a chiral symmetry breaking, i.e., the spontaneous formation of a chiral-icosahedral shell (I−Au60) from achiral (Ih) precursor forms, accompanied by a contraction in the Au–Au bonding and hence the radius of this perfect golden sphere, in which all 60 sites are chemically equivalent. This structure, which resembles the most complex of semi-regular (Archimedean) polyhedra (34.5*), may be viewed as an optimal solution to the topological problem: how to close a 60-vertex 2D (triangular) net in 3D. The singular rigidity of the I−Au60 manifests in uniquely discrete structural, vibrational, electronic, and optical signatures, which we report herein as a guide to its experimental detection and ultimately its isolation in material forms.
AB - The combination of profound chirality and high symmetry on the nm-scale is unusual and would open exciting avenues, both fundamental and applied. Here we show how the unique electronic structure and bonding of quasi-2D gold makes this possible. We report a chiral symmetry breaking, i.e., the spontaneous formation of a chiral-icosahedral shell (I−Au60) from achiral (Ih) precursor forms, accompanied by a contraction in the Au–Au bonding and hence the radius of this perfect golden sphere, in which all 60 sites are chemically equivalent. This structure, which resembles the most complex of semi-regular (Archimedean) polyhedra (34.5*), may be viewed as an optimal solution to the topological problem: how to close a 60-vertex 2D (triangular) net in 3D. The singular rigidity of the I−Au60 manifests in uniquely discrete structural, vibrational, electronic, and optical signatures, which we report herein as a guide to its experimental detection and ultimately its isolation in material forms.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-05215-3
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-05215-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 30135495
AN - SCOPUS:85052068155
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 3352
ER -