Investigation of finite-size effects in chemical bonding of AuPd nanoalloys
In this paper, the size-dependent changes in energetic, vibrational, and electronic properties of C–O gas molecule interacting with surface Pd atom of a variety of AuPd nanoalloy structures are investigated by means of first principles calculations. The variation in C–O adsorption energies, C–O vibration frequencies (ν{sub C−O}), and Pd d-bond centers (ε{sub d}) on a series of non-supported Au{sub n−1}–Pd{sub 1} nanoparticles (with n varying from 13 to 147) and on two semi-finite surfaces are inspected with cluster size. We demonstrate for the first time that, with small AuPd bimetallic three-dimensional clusters as TOh{sub 38}, one can reach cluster size convergence even for such a sensitive observable as the adsorption energy on a metal surface. Indeed, the results show that the adsorbate-induced perturbation is extremely local and it only concerns the isolated Pd interacting with the reactive gas molecule. Except for 13 atom clusters, in which molecular behaviour is predominant, no finite-size effects are observed for surface Pd atom substituted in AuPd free nanoclusters above 38 atoms.