Shell Dependent Chemical Reactivity of Large Sodium Clusters

Abstract
It has been shown in the past that sodium clusters possess an electronic shell structure characteristic of a nearly spherical, finite Fermi system. For this reason they might be expected to behave like giant atoms. In fact, closed shell clusters are known to have particularly high ionization energies. In this paper, we report variations in the reactivity of Nan for 100 ≤ n ≤ 800 with molecular oxygen. Clusters with completely filled electron shells are found to be relatively unreactive.