ABSTRACT
When the reader begins reading this book, it will be partially
obsolete. We do not know presently the history of carbon and
silicon nanoparticles since each day brings a new hypothetical form
whose synthesis will perhaps turn out to be possible. This is the
proof that the topics is in complete bubbling. In old books (not so
old actually prior to 1981!), students and researchers religiously
learned that “the three relatively well-known allotropes of carbon
are amorphous carbon, graphite, and diamond which differ from the
electronic structure point of view by the hybridization defined as a
combination of atomic orbitals.” Note that the word “amorphous”
encompasses all the forms that are non crystalline, in a more
or less obscure meaning for the “old science.” The discovery of
C60 Kroto et al. (1985) made a dent in this theorem and opened Pandora’s box. New forms of carbon exist, and their huge number
needs a brainstorming of theoreticians and experimentalists. Other
“theorems” have been revisited over the past three decades:
magnetism appears in small systems Litran et al. (2006) based on elements (Rh, Pd . . . ) that are not recognized as ferromagnetic at
room temperature, such as Fe, Ni, Co, and Gd. Gold nanoparticles
Haruta (2003) deposited on particular substrates exhibit a catalytic
activity, whereas gold does not belong to the so-called “transition
metal column.” All these amazing features are now recognized as
“size effects” at the nanoscale, clusters or nanoparticles being at
the frontier of the molecular and the solid-state physics. The size
effects, which are novel aspects of atomic behavior that emerge at
the nanoscale, have been summarized by famous lecturers. Among
them, Richard Feynman (Feynman, 1959), whose 1959 pioneering
lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Even When
You Get There” was at the genesis of the cluster science. Uzi
Landman (Barnett and Landman, 1993), one of the pioneers for the
development of the computational materials science with a lecture
entitled “Small can be different,” and Stephen R. Berry (Berry, 2002),
one of the pioneers in the finite-time thermodynamics with a lecture
entitled “The amazing phases of small systems” also set landmarks.