Experimental and theoretical investigation on binary semiconductor clusters of Bi/Si, Bi/Ge, and Bi/Sn.

Bi(m)M(n)- (M = Si, Ge, Sn) binary cluster anions are generated by using laser ablation on mixtures of Bi and M (M = Si, Ge, Sn) samples and studied by reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer (RTOF-MS) in the gas phase. Some magic number clusters are present in the mass spectra which indicate that they are in stable structures. For small anions (m + n < or = 6), their structures are investigated with the DFT method and the energetically lowest lying structures are obtained. For the binary anionic clusters with the same composition containing Si, Ge, and Sn, they share similar geometric and electronic structure in the small size except that BiSi3-, BiSi5-, Bi2Si2-, Bi2Si3-, and Bi4Sn2- are different for the lowest energetic structures, and the ground states for all the anions are in their lowest spin states. The calculated VDE (vertical detachment energy) and binding energy confirm the obviously magic number cluster of BiM4- (M = Si, Ge, Sn), which agrees with the experimental results.