Super-Abundant Size-Selected Cluster Technology for Nanoscale Design of Functional Materials

大小选择团簇是原子的集合，从2到~20,000，直径在几埃到~20nm之间。团簇显著的物理和化学性质取决于它们所含的原子数量，与相应的单个原子和大块固体有很大的不同。它们有许多潜在的应用，作为催化颗粒，作为新型电子和光子材料和传感器的组成部分，作为生物芯片中蛋白质分子的结合位点，作为环境参考材料，等等。最好的束束源每天只能产生1微克束束。我提出了一种方法，将这个速率提高10个数量级，改变磁场。由“矩阵组装簇源”（MACS）生产的可选尺寸簇的可用性的巨大增加有望在广泛的学科领域（从物理和化学到生物和工程）和应用领域开辟全新的视野，为基础科学和先进技术的根本进步创造重大机会，特别是在功能材料的纳米级设计方面。

Size-selected clusters are collections of atoms, from 2 to ~20,000, with diameters between a few Angstroms and ~20nm. The remarkable physical and chemical properties of clusters depend on the number of atoms they contain and differ dramatically from the corresponding individual atoms and bulk solids. They have numerous potential applications, as catalytic particles, as components of novel electronic and photonic materials and sensors, as binding sites for protein molecules in biochips, as environmental reference materials, etc etc. The best current cluster beam sources are limited to the production of ~1microgram of clusters per day. I propose a method to increase that rate by 10 orders of magnitude, transforming the field. The enormous increase in the availability of size-selected clusters produced by the "Matrix-Assembly Cluster Source" (MACS) is expected to open up completely new horizons across a wide range of disciplines - from physics and chemistry to biology and engineering - and applications, creating significant opportunities for radical advances in both basic science and advanced technology, notably in the nanoscale design of functional materials.