[5]. Thus, they attract the interests of interdisciplinary researchers. A primary task in the research of boron clusters is to find the most stable structures of clusters containing given numbers and types of atoms. In this mini-review, we summarize the geometries and electronic structures of two commonly studied boron clusters, planar boron clusters and all-boron fullerenes.
Planar Boron ClustersIn the solid state, boron compounds often adopt threedimensional (3D) structures [6][7][8][9][10]. One heavily studied type is boranes of general form B n H n . Most of the boranes are shown to be cage-like, referred as deltahedra [11]. The representative example is B 12 H 12 2− , which was first theoretically investigated by Longuet-Higgins and Roberts using molecular orbital theory [12]. They concluded that the B 12 H 12 structure could be stable only as a di-anion, B 12 H 12 2− , having 13 skeletal bonding orbitals and 12 outward pointing external orbitals. This hypothesis was confirmed later by experimental data, and the structure of B 12 H 12 2− anion was shown to be icosahedral [13]. Unlike 3D cage structures, which are the dominant configurations of boron compounds in the solid state, the pure small boron clusters (n ≤ 40) are found to be two-dimensional (2D) planar or quasi-planar in the gas phase, and the chemical bonding analysis suggests that this planarity is a consequence of π bonding in the cluster forms [9,10]. The simplest pure boron cluster is the diatomic B 2 , which serves as the first example of unusual chemical bonding in the boron species. On the basis of Hartree-Fock and UMP4 (unrestricted fourth order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory) calculations [14], the next pure boron cluster, B 3 , is shown to exist in cationic or anionic forms with a triangular structure of D 3h symmetry.In 2004, Zubarev et al concluded that pure boron clusters containing up to 15 atoms retain planar or quasi-planar conformation [15]. However, there still remains a strong interest to determine the critical size at which structural transition from 2D to 3D occurs. This, however, is a challenging task due to the complexity of these systems and the existence of a large number of isomers. Such 2D-to-3D structural transition is also strongly affected by the charges of boron clusters. For cationic boron clusters (B n + ), the largest planar or quasi-planar structure was established for n=15, and the transition from planar to cylindrical structure takes place for B 16 + [16]. Combining experiment (photoelectron spectroscopy) with computational studies (global minimum search), Kiran et al [17]found that the neutral B 20 cluster undergoes a 2D-to-3D structural transition, resulting in formation of a stable double-ring tubular structure with a diameter of 5.2 Å (Figure 1). The tubular structure was considered as the embryo of the thinnest single-walled boron nanotubes.However, the upper limit for the B n − anionic clusters still remains an open question. Through a joint study of photoelectron spectroscopy and ab initio computatio...