ENERGETICS OF SMALL CLUSTERS OF STABILIZED JELLIUM - CONTINUUM AND SHELL-STRUCTURE EFFECTS

We evaluate binding energies, ionization energies, and second-order en ergy differences as functions of valence electron number for small sph erical clusters of stabilized jellium, using the Kohn-Sham equations w ith the local-spin-density (LSD) approximation. Cohesive energies are also reported. A comparison is made with semiclassical formulas (liqui d drop model and Pade approximant, with surface and curvature coeffici ents derived from first principles). These formulas nicely average the shell-structure oscillations of the energy, which are found to be alm ost the same as for ordinary jellium. Spherical clusters with 1, 7, an d 9 electrons have binding energies very close to those of the semicla ssical predictions. (C) 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.