Energetics of small clusters of stabilized jellium: Continuum and shell-structure effects

We evaluate binding energies, ionization energies, and second-order energy differences as functions of valence electron number for small spherical clusters of stabilized jellium, using the Kohn–Sham equations with the local-spin-density (LSD) approximation. Cohesive energies are also reported. A comparison is made with semiclassical formulas (liquid drop model and Padé approximant, with surface and curvature coefficients derived from first principles). These formulas nicely average the shell-structure oscillations of the energy, which are found to be almost the same as for ordinary jellium. Spherical clusters with 1, 7, and 9 electrons have binding energies very close to those of the semiclassical predictions. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.