Research opportunities on clusters and cluster-assembled materials —A Department of Energy, Council on Materials Science Panel Report

The Panel was charged with assessing the present scientific understanding of the size-dependent physical and chemical properties of clusters, the methods of synthesis of macroscopic amounts of size-selected clusters with desired properties, and most importantly, the possibility of their controlled assembly into new materials with novel properties. The Panel was composed of both academic and industrial scientists from the physics, chemistry, and materials science communities, and met in January 1988. Present methods for the synthesis of useful amounts of size-selected clusters, with surface chemical properties purposefully controlled and/or modified, are almost nonexistent, and these fundamentally limit our ability to explore the assembly of clusters into potentially novel materials. The Panel concluded that a number of genuinely novel ideas had been enunciated, and that in its opinion some would surely lead to exciting new science and important new materials.