DFT investigation on structure, electronic and magnetic properties of Crn (n=2-8) clusters

A density functional investigation on the series of chromium clusters, i.e., Crn (n=2-8) is performed for finding their lowest energy structures and various electronic and magnetic properties. For electronic properties, we have predicted binding energy, HOMO-LUMO (HLG), chemical hardness (η) etc., and also for magnetic behavior, we have predicted the magnetic moments of the lowest energy cluster isomers. A systematic search imposing all possible initial magnetic configurations of the clusters is considered for finding lowest energy structures. All the calculations is carried out using a very popular GGA functional Perdew, Burke and Ernzerhof (PBE), as implemented in the VASP code.