STUDY OF THE ELECTRONIC AND STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF ZnO CLUSTERS

We present a systematic first-principle study of the structures, energetics and electronic structure of (ZnO) n clusters in the size range 1 ≤ n≤ 12. We show that the planar ring structures are stable for n < 8, while spheroidal structures made out of rings of (ZnO) 3 and (ZnO) 2 are stable for n ≥ 8. We examine the binding energies and HOMO–LUMO gaps of the clusters and try to understand our results from simple physical ideas.