The knowledge of the atomic structure of clusters composed by few atoms is a basic prerequisite to obtain insights into the mechanisms that determine their chemical and physical properties as a function of diameter, shape, surface termination, as well as to understand the mechanism of bulk formation. Due to the wide use of metal systems in our modern life, the accurate determination of the properties of 3d, 4d, and 5d metal clusters poses a huge problem for nanoscience. In this work, we report a density functional theory study of the atomic structure, binding energies, effective coordination numbers, average bond lengths, and magnetic properties of the 3d, 4d, and 5d metal (30 elements) clusters containing 13 atoms, M13. First, a set of lowest-energy local minimum structures (as supported by vibrational analysis) were obtained by combining high-temperature first-principles molecular-dynamics simulation, structure crossover, and the selection of five well-known M13 structures. Several new lower energy configurations were identified, e.g., Pd13, W13, Pt13, etc., and previous known structures were confirmed by our calculations. Furthermore, the following trends were identified: (i) compact icosahedral-like forms at the beginning of each metal series, more opened structures such as hexagonal bilayerlike and double simple-cubic layers at the middle of each metal series, and structures with an increasing effective coordination number occur for large d states occupation. (ii) For Au13, we found that spin-orbit coupling favors the three-dimensional (3D) structures, i.e., a 3D structure is about 0.10 eV lower in energy than the lowest energy known two-dimensional configuration. (iii) The magnetic exchange interactions play an important role for particular systems such as Fe, Cr, and Mn. (iv) The analysis of the binding energy and average bond lengths show a paraboliclike shape as a function of the occupation of the d states and hence, most of the properties can be explained by the chemistry picture of occupation of the bonding and antibonding states.

Antisites, carbon substitutionals, and vacancy defects in BN nanotubes have been investigated by first-principles total energy calculations, based on a density functional spin-polarized method. All defects introduce localized energy levels inside the band gap. For some open-shell systems (carbon substitutionals and vacancy defects) the levels in the gap region present an exchange splitting greater than 0.5 eV. The ${\mathrm{C}}_{\mathrm{B}}$ and ${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{B}}$ defects, in N-rich growth condition, and ${\mathrm{C}}_{\mathrm{N}}$ in B-rich growth condition, are the ones that present the lower formation energies.

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) have ideal morphologies to act as active parts and connections in nanodevices since they naturally restrict the conduction channels and periodicity to one dimension. The advantages from the reduced spatial dimension can be greatly enhanced by wisely selecting the materials composing the NWs, through the knowledge of the properties of their bulk counterparts. NW's properties can still be tailored by managing (i) internal or intrinsic characteristics as diameters, growth directions, structural phases, and the faceting or saturation of surfaces, and/or (ii) external or extrinsic influences as applied electric, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical fields. Bulk InAs has one of the lowest electron effective-masses among binary III-V semiconducting materials while bulk InP shows excellent optical properties, which make InAs and InP NWs candidates for optoelectronic materials. In this work, we use first-principles calculations to study the structural, electronic, and mechanical properties of [111] zinc-blende InAs and InP NWs as a function of diameter (ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 nm). The influence of external mechanical stress on the electronic properties is also analyzed. The axial lattice constants of the NWs are seen to decrease with decreasing diameter, as a consequence of a shorter surface lattice constant of the NWs, as compared to their bulk values. The Young's modulus of both InAs and InP NWs is determined to decrease while the Poisson's ratio to increase with decreasing diameters, with deviations from the bulk Young's modulus estimated to occur for NWs with diameters lower than 15 nm. The increase in the band-gaps with decreasing diameters is seen to be slower than the expected from simple quantum-mechanical models (1/D2, where D is the diameter), mainly for the smallest (<1.0$\hskip0.3em${}nm) diameters. The electron effective-masses are seen to increase with decreasing diameters, due to a k-dependent energy shift of the conduction-band minimum. The calculated work functions for both NWs show a decrease with decreasing diameters. The change in the NWs' band-edge eigenvalues with axial strain is calculated and the band-gap deformation potentials are determined and shown to change in signal within the range of studied diameters. The influence of the mechanical strain on the electronic bands is analyzed in terms of electronic charge decompositions in directions parallel and perpendicular to the NWs' axes. Direct to indirect band-gap transitions are observed for compressive strains in very thin NWs. The hole effective-mass is seen to be lower than the corresponding electron effective-mass for the studied NWs.