Aluminum clusters: Magnetic properties

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Abstract
We report the first measurement of the magnetic moments of gas phase aluminum clusters ranging in size from 2 to 25 atoms. Aluminum clusters are produced by pulsed laser vaporization of an aluminum rod inside the throat of a high pressure pulsed nozzle. The highly collimated cluster beam is passed through a Stern–Gerlach magnet and the deflected beam is analyzed by spatially resolved photoionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Aluminum clusters less than nine atoms in size are found to have magnetic moments generally consistent with those predicted from spin and orbital moments of the ground electronic states. As expected, a general trend toward reduced magnetic moment per atom with increasing cluster size is observed.