Optimisation of purification techniques for the preparation of large-volume aqueous solar nanoparticle inks for organic photovoltaics

• Furqan Almyahi,
• Thomas R. Andersen,
• Nathan A. Cooling,
• Natalie P. Holmes,
• Matthew J. Griffith,
• Krishna Feron,
• Xiaojing Zhou,
• Warwick J. Belcher and
• Paul C. Dastoor

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 649–659, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.60

• integrating sphere. Device testing The NP-OPV devices had a masked area of 3.8 mm2 and were tested under a nitrogen atmosphere in glovebox before and after annealing at 140 °C for 4 min. Current density–voltage (J–V) measurements were performed using Keithley 2400 source meter under illumination of a Newport

Sensing behavior of flower-shaped MoS₂ nanoflakes: case study with methanol and xylene

• Maryam Barzegar,
• Masoud Berahman and
• Azam Iraji zad

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 608–615, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.57

• nanoflakes. It was found that the nanoflakes form a flower-shaped structure with a large surface-to-volume ratio. The sensor device was successfully fabricated by spin coating of MoS2 flakes on an alumina substrate, on the back side of which a Pt heater circuit for thermal annealing was deposited. Our

Electron interactions with the heteronuclear carbonyl precursor H₂FeRu₃(CO)₁₃ and comparison with HFeCo₃(CO)₁₂: from fundamental gas phase and surface science studies to focused electron beam induced deposition

• Ragesh Kumar T P,
• Paul Weirich,
• Lukas Hrachowina,
• Marc Hanefeld,
• Ragnar Bjornsson,
• Helgi Rafn Hrodmarsson,
• Sven Barth,
• D. Howard Fairbrother,
• Michael Huth and
• Oddur Ingólfsson

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 555–579, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.53

• are largely unaffected by either further electron irradiation or annealing to room temperature, with a predicted metal content similar to what is observed in FEBID. Furthermore, gas phase experiments indicate formation of Fe(CO)4 from H2FeRu3(CO)13 upon low energy electron interaction. This fragment

• such as Pt and Au by post-growth treatment and in situ injection of water for carbon removal [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. These oxidative processes are suitable for precious metals, while other approaches such as annealing under vacuum [14] and hydrogen atmosphere [15][16] are suitable for metals such

• regions for this electron dose (1.3 × 1017 e−/cm2) are seen to be similar to those shown in Figure 9, with the dominant effects being the loss of signal intensity in the O 1s region (≈70% of its initial value) and a decrease of ≈1.6 eV in the binding energy of the Ru atoms. Upon annealing this irradiated

Photocatalytic and adsorption properties of TiO₂-pillared montmorillonite obtained by hydrothermally activated intercalation of titanium polyhydroxo complexes

• Mikhail F. Butman,
• Nikolay L. Ovchinnikov,
• Nikita S. Karasev,
• Nataliya E. Kochkina,
• Alexander V. Agafonov and
• Alexandr V. Vinogradov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 364–378, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.36

• close to the sol formation limit. The materials, produced at various annealing temperatures from the intercalated samples, were characterized by infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)/thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction, dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements

• ] describes a low-temperature method for pillaring MM using a TiO2 sol produced by hydrolyzing TiCl4 in strongly acidic medium and subsequent drying at 30–80 °C. Chen et al. [12] shows the results of pillaring MM using titanium tetra-N-butoxide hydrolyzed in HCl solution and subsequent annealing at a

• space of montmorillonite prior the stage of heat treatment, and significantly improves the transformation of these particles into well-crystallized TiO2 pillars after further annealing. To the best of our knowledge, the literature data contain no information on hydrothermal synthesis of the pillared MM

Review: Electrostatically actuated nanobeam-based nanoelectromechanical switches – materials solutions and operational conditions

• Liga Jasulaneca,
• Jelena Kosmaca,
• Raimonds Meija,
• Jana Andzane and
• Donats Erts

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 271–300, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.29

• ] top-down NEM switch fabrication approaches. Similarly to copper, the fabrication of a platinum cantilever NEM switching element involved an additional thermal annealing step at 300 °C to reduce the stress gradient in the beam. The usability of platinum for electron-beam lithography-based fabrication

• residual stress within the thin film layers which has to be taken into account for NEM switch applications as it can cause unwanted out-of-plane deformations of switching elements [6][142]. Therefore, specific treatments for switching elements such as high-temperature annealing is necessary to release the

Synthesis and characterization of electrospun molybdenum dioxide–carbon nanofibers as sulfur matrix additives for rechargeable lithium–sulfur battery applications

• Ruiyuan Zhuang,
• Shanshan Yao,
• Maoxiang Jing,
• Xiangqian Shen,
• Jun Xiang,
• Tianbao Li,
• Kesong Xiao and
• Shibiao Qin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 262–270, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.28

• present work, a facile route based on a single-spinneret electrospinning technique with a subsequent annealing process was developed to prepare MoO2–CNFs. The effect of MoO2–CNF heat treatment on the cycle performance of sulfur/MoO2–CNFs electrodes was examined. The data showed that MoO2–CNFs calcined at

• 500–850 cm−1 were attributed to Mo–O–Mo, indicating the occurrence of crystallization [28]. Both the Raman spectra and XRD results suggested that MoO2–CNFs were formed through a subsequent annealing process. The broad band at 3400 cm−1 was attributed to the O–H stretching vibration due to absorbed H2O

BN/Ag hybrid nanomaterials with petal-like surfaces as catalysts and antibacterial agents

• Konstantin L. Firestein,
• Denis V. Leybo,
• Alexander E. Steinman,
• Andrey M. Kovalskii,
• Andrei T. Matveev,
• Anton M. Manakhov,
• Irina V. Sukhorukova,
• Pavel V. Slukin,
• Nadezda K. Fursova,
• Sergey G. Ignatov,
• Dmitri V. Golberg and
• Dmitry V. Shtansky

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 250–261, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.27

• the CVD method. The best catalytic characteristics (100% methanol conversion at 350 °C) were achieved using the UV BN/Ag HNMs without preliminary annealing at 600 °C in an oxidizing atmosphere. Both types of the BN/Ag HNMs possess a profound antibacterial effect against Escherichia coli K-261 bacteria

• gave the following Ag contents: CVD BN/Ag HNMs – 1.5 wt %, UV BN/Ag HNMs – 2.4 wt %. To shed a light on surface chemistry of BN/Ag HNMs and to also understand how it changes during heating in the oxidizing atmosphere, we have performed XPS analysis of UV BN/Ag HNMs before and after annealing in air at

• elevated temperatures, are required. To completely exclude the possible influence of an oxidation process on the phase composition and to directly observe the structural evolutions upon heating, the annealing tests were first conducted directly in the TEM column. Figure 4a and 4b represent TEM micrographs

Anchoring of a dye precursor on NiO(001) studied by non-contact atomic force microscopy

• Sara Freund,
• Antoine Hinaut,
• Nathalie Marinakis,
• Edwin C. Constable,
• Ernst Meyer,
• Catherine E. Housecroft and
• Thilo Glatzel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 242–249, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.26

• room temperature. Figure 3a presents a large-scale topographic image of the surface after a low-coverage deposition process (0.2 monolayers) without any post-annealing treatment. The sample exhibits large NiO(001) terraces separated by monoatomic steps and covered with DCPDMbpy molecules. The different

• , no enhanced diffusion or island formation of the organic ligand at this low surface coverage and under these annealing conditions was observed (see Figure S1 in Supporting Information File 1). Also annealing at higher temperatures did not increase the mobility of the molecules, but rather led to

• and C are in α-conformation whereas molecule D is the β-form of DCPDMbpy. The ratio α/β varies from one cluster to the other, suggesting that there is no preferred conformation. With an increased coverage (0.7 monolayers) followed by a post-annealing process (1 h at 150 °C) molecular islands were

Gas-assisted silver deposition with a focused electron beam

• Luisa Berger,
• Katarzyna Madajska,
• Iwona B. Szymanska,
• Katja Höflich,
• Mikhail N. Polyakov,
• Jakub Jurczyk,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 224–232, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.24

• arises from the surface enhanced Raman from the silver crystals as previously reported by various groups [13][24]. We assume that the line conductivity could be further improved by purification of the deposit, thus reducing the amount of carbon. Alternatively, annealing could coalesce the individual

Dopant-stimulated growth of GaN nanotube-like nanostructures on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

• Alexey D. Bolshakov,
• Alexey M. Mozharov,
• Georgiy A. Sapunov,
• Igor V. Shtrom,
• Nickolay V. Sibirev,
• Vladimir V. Fedorov,
• Evgeniy V. Ubyivovk,
• Maria Tchernycheva,
• George E. Cirlin and
• Ivan S. Mukhin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 146–154, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.17

• thin AlN layer grown by means of plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. In the first part of our study we investigate the influence of the growth parameters on the geometrical properties of the GaN NW arrays. First, we find that the annealing procedure carried out prior to deposition of the AlN buffer

• Discussion Growth technique In our experiments, we used p-type Si(111) substrates that were treated with the Shiraki cleaning procedure prior to loading into the MBE chamber, where each substrate was annealed in ultrahigh vacuum. The annealing temperature varied from sample to sample in the range of 850 to

• /h on a substrate that underwent low-temperature (850 °C) annealing. It should be mentioned that in this case a silicon oxide layer covering the substrate was removed only partially or was not removed at all. This conclusion is based on the analysis of in situ reflection high-energy electron

Atomic layer deposition and properties of ZrO₂/Fe₂O₃ thin films

• Kristjan Kalam,
• Helina Seemen,
• Peeter Ritslaid,
• Mihkel Rähn,
• Aile Tamm,
• Kaupo Kukli,
• Aarne Kasikov,
• Joosep Link,
• Raivo Stern,
• Salvador Dueñas,
• Helena Castán and
• Héctor García

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 119–128, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.14

• grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) at 400 °C. Metastable phases of ZrO2 were stabilized by Fe2O3 doping. The number of alternating ZrO2 and Fe2O3 deposition cycles were varied in order to achieve films with different cation ratios. The influence of annealing on the composition and structure of the

• properties were characterized [5]. Upon annealing at 500 °C, the metastable cubic phase of ZrO2 was stabilized and ferromagnetic hysteresis of the nanocomposite film was confirmed. Saturation magnetization was measured to be ≈173 emu/g [5]. Undoped ZrO2, prepared by pulsed electron beam deposition [6] or

• and tetrakis(dimethylamido)zirconium(IV)/water for Fe2O3 and ZrO2, respectively, and Fe2O3 was reduced to Fe3O4 after the growth. In another study [19], ZrO2/Fe thin films were prepared by ALD from β-diketonate precursors and ozone. After annealing at 600 °C in N2 flux for 60 s, the films exhibited

Comparative study of post-growth annealing of Cu(hfac)₂, Co₂(CO)₈ and Me₂Au(acac) metal precursors deposited by FEBID

• Marcos V. Puydinger dos Santos,
• Aleksandra Szkudlarek,
• Artur Rydosz,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez,
• Fanny Béron,
• Kleber R. Pirota,
• Stanislav Moshkalev,
• José Alexandre Diniz and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 91–101, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.11

• annealing protocol at 100, 200, and 300 °C under high vacuum on deposits obtained from Co2(CO)8, Cu(II)(hfac)2, and Me2Au(acac) to study improvements on composition and electrical conductivity. Although the as-deposited material was similar for all precursors, metal grains embedded in a carbonaceous matrix

• , the post-growth annealing results differed. Cu-containing deposits showed the formation of pure Cu nanocrystals at the outer surface of the initial deposit for temperatures above 100 °C, due to the migration of Cu atoms from the carbonaceous matrix containing carbon, oxygen, and fluorine atoms. The

• average size of the Cu crystals doubles between 100 and 300 °C of annealing temperature, while the composition remains constant. In contrast, for Co-containing deposits oxygen release was observed upon annealing, while the carbon content remained approximately constant; the cobalt atoms coalesced to form

Electron-driven and thermal chemistry during water-assisted purification of platinum nanomaterials generated by electron beam induced deposition

• Ziyan Warneke,
• Markus Rohdenburg,
• Jonas Warneke,
• Janina Kopyra and
• Petra Swiderek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 77–90, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.10

• desorbed from the surface during dosing of H2O and during subsequent or simultaneous electron exposure. Also, the effect of annealing was investigated. In a first experiment (Figure 5), a 30 monolayer film of MeCpPtMe3 was partially degraded by electron irradiation until ESD of CH4 had decreased to about

• annealing. This led to desorption of only small amounts of CH4 (Figure 5, between 400 and 600 s) as evident from a slight increase of the m/z 15 signal. This indicates that precursor fragments can be hydrolyzed to some extent but this reaction is much less efficient for removal of organic material than the

• background signal and irradiation was performed only after dosing of H2O (Figure 6). In fact, Figure 6 shows a small and continuous increase of the MS signal at m/z 28 during dosing of H2O. When electron irradiation was started after leaking of H2O without prior annealing, the desorption rate of CO increased

Growth model and structure evolution of Ag layers deposited on Ge films

• Arkadiusz Ciesielski,
• Lukasz Skowronski,
• Ewa Górecka,
• Jakub Kierdaszuk and
• Tomasz Szoplik

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 66–76, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.9

• smaller grains near the Ag surface. Annealing at different temperatures and various durations allowed for a controlled distribution of crystal dimensions, thus influencing the segregation rate. Furthermore, using ellipsometric and optical transmission measurements we determined the time-dependent

• silver, while in the case of measurements performed after 2 months (Figure 3b,d,f) it was not. Calculated density profiles of Ag/Ge structures (Figure 3, right column) give information on dynamics of the segregation process. Annealing the samples at 100 °C results in the increase of the average grain

• size almost up to the value of the non wetted film (see Table 1). Annealing reduces the decrease of the silver film density with increasing distance from the SiO2/Ag interface, slowing down the segregation process. However, annealing at only 100 °C does not cancel the density slope completely, still

Response under low-energy electron irradiation of a thin film of a potential copper precursor for focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID)

• Leo Sala,
• Iwona B. Szymańska,
• Céline Dablemont,
• Anne Lafosse and
• Lionel Amiaud

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 57–65, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.8

• annealing in vacuum. In the second part, the fragmentation of the amine ligands under electron impact is discussed, as well as the fragmentation of the perfluorinated carboxylate ligands. The effective cross section for the fragmentation and release of these ligands under 1.5 eV electron impact is then

• CH and NH stretching bands (350–400 meV). Only these last bands, especially the stretching NH contribution in the high-energy range, are visibly reduced on the dip-coated Si wafer, with nevertheless a significant remaining quantity. HREELS analysis of vacuum exposure and annealing effect The sample

• ligands was done by heating. Spectrum g in Figure 2 was recorded under the same conditions as spectrum f, but after a mild annealing above room temperature (T = 305 K), desorption was induced, visible by a small pressure rise in the chamber during the process. Back to low temperature, spectrum g is

Transition from silicene monolayer to thin Si films on Ag(111): comparison between experimental data and Monte Carlo simulation

• Alberto Curcella,
• Romain Bernard,
• Yves Borensztein,
• Silvia Pandolfi and
• Geoffroy Prévot

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 48–56, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.7

• 0.6 keV followed by annealing at 850 K. Si was evaporated from a Si rod with a commercial Omicron EFM3 evaporator. For AES/LEED experiments, the evaporation rate was between 0.03 and 0.06 ML/min, whereas for STM experiments, it was around 0.004 ML/min. Auger peak-to-peak intensities were measured

CdSe nanorod/TiO₂ nanoparticle heterojunctions with enhanced solar- and visible-light photocatalytic activity

• Fakher Laatar,
• Hatem Moussa,
• Halima Alem,
• Lavinia Balan,
• Emilien Girot,
• Ghouti Medjahdi,
• Hatem Ezzaouia and
• Raphaël Schneider

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2741–2752, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.273

• rue Jean Starcky, 68093 Mulhouse, France 10.3762/bjnano.8.273 Abstract CdSe nanorods (NRs) with an average length of ≈120 nm were prepared by a solvothermal process and associated to TiO2 nanoparticles (Aeroxide® P25) by annealing at 300 °C for 1 h. The content of CdSe NRs in CdSe/TiO2 composites was

The role of ligands in coinage-metal nanoparticles for electronics

• Ioannis Kanelidis and
• Tobias Kraus

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2625–2639, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.263

• period of six months. Its low boiling temperature and molecular weight reduced the amounts of carbonaceous residues after annealing and led to continuous conductive layers at low annealing temperature (175 °C) [103]. Other researchers replaced oleylamine with acetic acid (Figure 3) as described in [98

• transformation temperatures (Tp) are desirable for applications on plastic films with low glass-transition temperatures (Tg) [33][44]. The required annealing temperature is correlated with the length of the capping agents as reported by Gupta and co-workers. Inks of thiol-functionalized gold nanoparticles having

• , materials that combine conductivity at lower percolation thresholds and mechanical flexibility, improved conductivity was achieved by means of conventional thermal annealing [129] or plasma treatment [130]. Gold nanowires (AuNW) with core diameters below 2 nm were arranged into a mesh on PET substrates

Laser-assisted fabrication of gold nanoparticle-composed structures embedded in borosilicate glass

• Nikolay Nedyalkov,
• Mihaela Koleva,
• Nadya Stankova,
• Rosen Nikov,
• Mitsuhiro Terakawa,
• Yasutaka Nakajima,
• Lyubomir Aleksandrov and
• Reni Iordanova

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2454–2463, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.244

• -dimensional structures comprised of gold nanoparticles in glass. The sample material was gold-ion-doped borosilicate glass prepared by conventional melt quenching. The nanoparticle growth technique consisted of two steps – laser-induced defect formation and annealing. The first step was realized by

• . At 355, 532 and 1064 nm, no coloration of the sample was observed. The femtosecond laser irradiation at 800 nm also induced defects, again observed as brown coloration. The absorbance spectra indicated that this coloration was related to the formation of oxygen deficiency defects. After annealing

• ., silicate, phosphate and borate glasses, titanium and aluminum oxides, and polymers) are processed by laser radiation with appropriate parameters. Metal nanoparticles are formed within the irradiated area after a subsequent thermal annealing. This photoreduction process has been achieved by using CW lasers

Fabrication of CeO₂–MO_x (M = Cu, Co, Ni) composite yolk–shell nanospheres with enhanced catalytic properties for CO oxidation

• Ling Liu,
• Jingjing Shi,
• Hongxia Cao,
• Ruiyu Wang and
• Ziwu Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2425–2437, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.241

• synthesized by thermal decomposition of the as-prepared Ce–Zn precursor and exhibited excellent activity for removing CO [17]. CeO2–ZnO composite hollow microspheres were fabricated via annealing of a precursor of amorphous zinc–cerium citrate hollow microspheres and presented excellent catalytic activity in

• balance between the opposite forces Fc and Fa is disturbed. When Fc > Fa at a high ΔT, the inner core contracts inward and detaches from the preformed outer shell (stage II). During further annealing, the inner core shrinks into a solid structure and consequently CeO2 yolk–shell spheres form (stage III

Comparing postdeposition reactions of electrons and radicals with Pt nanostructures created by focused electron beam induced deposition

• Julie A. Spencer,
• Michael Barclay,
• Miranda J. Gallagher,
• Robert Winkler,
• Ilyas Unlu,
• Yung-Chien Wu,
• Harald Plank,
• Lisa McElwee-White and
• D. Howard Fairbrother

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2410–2424, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.240

• , spatially localized annealing (producing a temperature increase on the order of 300–400 K). Using this approach, Stanford et al. [24] reported that LAEBID augmented by reactive gases (O2) decreased the C content by 75% in nanostructures created from MeCpPtMe3. In related work, Lewis et al. [25] found that

Robust procedure for creating and characterizing the atomic structure of scanning tunneling microscope tips

• Sumit Tewari,
• Koen M. Bastiaans,
• Milan P. Allan and
• Jan M. van Ruitenbeek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2389–2395, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.238

• to the second atomic layer. We demonstrate a controlled evolution of such tips starting from undefined tip shapes. Keywords: adatom imaging; mechanical annealing; scanning tunneling microscopy (STM); STM tip; tip apex; Introduction After the advent of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981

• controlled by the overlap of the electronic wave functions of tip and surface. Many techniques are available for preparing atomically clean sample surfaces, including repeated cycles of sputtering and annealing in the case of metals, by fresh cleavage in the case of suitable materials, and by high

• -temperature annealing as for many semiconductors. However, a well defined tip structure at the atomic scale is still hard to achieve. Mechanical grinding [1], electro-polishing [11] or electrochemical etching [12][13] are standard ex situ methods for preparing microscopically sharp tips. The tip apex can be

Increasing the stability of DNA nanostructure templates by atomic layer deposition of Al₂O₃ and its application in imprinting lithography

• Hyojeong Kim,
• Kristin Arbutina,
• Anqin Xu and
• Haitao Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2363–2375, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.236

• Al2O3 onto the nanostructures followed by thermal annealing [36]. In addition to the 2D pattern transfer processes, gold nanoparticles with specified 3D shapes were synthesized by growing seed particles in the internal cavities of 3D DNA nanostructures [37][38]. Compared to the above developments, there

• 95 to 20 °C at a rate of 1 °C/min. After the annealing, excess staple strands were removed by purifying 140 μL of the DNA origami triangle solution using 500–600 μL of the TAE/Mg2+ buffer in a Microcon YM-100 100 kDa MW centrifuge filter (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA) on a single-speed benchtop

Changes of the absorption cross section of Si nanocrystals with temperature and distance

• Michael Greben,
• Petro Khoroshyy,
• Sebastian Gutsch,
• Daniel Hiller,
• Margit Zacharias and
• Jan Valenta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2315–2323, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.231

• capping layer, respectively. The samples were subsequently annealed in a quartz tube furnace at 1150 °C for 1 h in high-purity N2 in order to form Si NCs and then passivated by annealing in H2 at 500 °C for defect passivation. In addition to ML samples, one single layer (SL) sample with a thick SRON 200

Au₅₅, a stable glassy cluster: results of ab initio calculations

• Dieter Vollath,
• David Holec and
• Franz Dieter Fischer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2221–2229, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.222

• ). In case of the crystalline starting configuration (Figure 1a), the initial coordination numbers (equivalent to the crystalline cluster being only relaxed at 0 K without the annealing procedure) and the coordination numbers after annealing at 900 K and subsequent relaxation at 0 K are displayed. For

• . The most frequent coordination number is seven. However, after annealing at 900 K and relaxation at 0 K, the highest coordination number is reduced from twelve to ten, which is close to 10.9 exhibited by liquid gold [27]. The cluster did not crystallize again after quenching it to 0 K but instead it

• relaxed crystalline cluster was annealed on a series of temperatures up to 1200 K, after which each nanocluster was analyzed for the coordination numbers and energies. Figure 4 displays the development of the maximum and the average coordination number as a function of the annealing temperature. These