The focus of our work is on the production of highly magnetic materials out of Cu clusters. We have studied the relative effects of N-capping as well as N mono-doping on the structural stability and electronic properties of the small Cu clusters using first principles density functional theory based electronic structure calculations.We find that the N-capped clusters are more promising in producing giant magnetic moments, such as 14 µB for the Cu6N6 cluster and 29 µB for the icosahedral Cu13N12 clusters. This is accompanied by a substantial enhancement in their stability. We suggest that these giant magnetic moments of the capped Cun clusters have relevance to the observed room temperature ferromagnetism of Cu doped GaN. For cage-like hollow Cu-clusters, an endohedral Cr-doping together with the N-capping appears as the most promising means to produce stable giant magnetic moments in the copper clusters.

No abstract