Electronic structure and optical properties of transition metal doped silicon clusters on surfaces

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Transition metal-doped silicon clusters are attracting considerable attention because of their tunable HOMO-LUMO gaps and a presumed high stability of `magic clusters, which are characterized by electronic shell closure and a highly symmetric silicon shell encapsulating a transition metal atom. In spite of extensive theoretical work, their optical properties are hitherto unknown, owing to a lack of experiments which are sensitive enough to investigate the optical properties of size-selected clusters only available in trace quantities. In this project we aim at a detailed understanding of the electronic structure and the optical properties of size-selected doped silicon clusters on surfaces by probing them directly with UV/visible photoabsorption, fluorescence, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. A central question that will be addressed with these methods concerns the fundamental effect of doping on the optical and electronic properties of a nanoscale semiconductor cluster defined to atomic precision.