Toward Controlling the Electronic Structures of Chemically Modified Superatoms of Gold and Silver

Atomically precise gold/silver clusters protected by organic ligands L, [(Au/Ag) x L y ] z , have gained increasing interest as building units of functional materials because of their novel photophysical and physicochemical properties. The properties of [(Au/Ag) x L y ] z are intimately associated with the quantized electronic structures of the metallic cores, which can be viewed as superatoms from the analogy of naked Au/Ag clusters. Thus,...