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.