Bottom-up constructing all-metal functional materials is challenging, because the metal clusters are prone to lose their original structures during coalensence. In this work, we report that closed-shell coinage metal superatoms can achieve direct chemical bonding without losing their electronic properties. The reason is that the supermolecule formed by two superatoms has the same number of bonding and anti-bonding supermolecular orbitals, in which the bonding orbitals contribute to bonding and the anti-bonding orbitals with anti-phase orbitals delocalized over each monomer to maintain the individual geometric and electronic structural properties. Further analysis indicates the interactions between two superatoms are too weak to break the structure of monomers, which is confirmed by the first-principles molecular dynamics simulations. With these superatoms as the basic units, a series of robust one-dimensional and two-dimensional nanostructures are fabricated. Our findings provide a general strategy to take advantage of superatoms in regulating bonding compared to natural atoms, which paves the way for the bottom-up design of materials with collective properties.

The distinctive electronic bonding properties of actinide-containing clusters have made them the subject of increased attention. Herein, we use density functional theory calculations to examine a unique actinide-encapsulated U@B40 cage structure, revealing that it exhibits a 32-electron (1S²1P⁶1D¹⁰1F¹⁴) closed-shell singlet configuration in which all s, p, d, and f shells of the U atom are filled. Furthermore, the binding energy of 8.22 eV calculated for this cluster implies considerable stability, and the simulated infrared and Raman spectra feature U–B₄₀ stretching and pure B₄₀ breathing vibration modes, respectively. These spectral characteristics may aid future experimental investigations. Thus, this work not only describes a new member of the superatomic family, but also provides a method of encapsulating radioactive actinides.

Proton transfer and chiral conversion via hydrogen bonds (HBs) are important processes in applications such as chiral recognition, enzymatic catalysis, and drug preparation. Herein, we investigate the chiral conversion and interlayer recognition, via concerted intralayer proton transfer (CIPT) processes, of small prismatic water clusters, in the form of bilayer n-membered water rings (BnWRs, n = 4, 5, 6). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that despite the small energy variations between the initial and final states of the clusters of less than 0.3 kcal·mol^-1, the vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectrum provides clear chiral recognition peaks in the range of 3, 000 to 3, 500 cm^-1. The vibrational modes in this region correspond to stretching of intralayer HBs, which produces strong signals in the infrared (IR) and Raman spectra. The electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectrum also reveals obvious chiroptical characteristics. The molecular orbitals involved in the interlayer interaction are dominated by O 2p atomic orbitals; the energy of these orbitals increased by up to 0.1 eV as a result of the CIPT processes, indicating corresponding recognition between monolayer water clusters. In addition, isotopic substitution by deuterium in the BnWRs results in characteristic peaks in the VCD spectra that can be used as fingerprints in the identification of the chiral structures. Our findings provide new insights into the mechanism of chiral recognition in small prismatic water clusters at the atomic level as well as incentives for future experimental studies.

Actinide elements encaged in a superatomic cluster can exhibit unique properties due to their hyperactive valence electrons. Herein, the electronic and spectroscopic properties of Th@Au₁₄ are predicted and compared with that of the isoelectronic entities [Ac@Au₁₄]^- and [Pa@Au₁₄]⁺ using density functional theory. The calculation results indicate that these clusters all adopt a closedshell superatomic 18-electron configuration of the 1S²1P⁶1D¹⁰ Jellium state. The absorption spectrum of Th@Au₁₄ can be interpreted by the Jelliumatic orbital model. In addition, calculated spectra of pyridine-Th@Au₁₄ complexes in the blue laser band exhibit strong peaks attributable to charge transfer (CT) from the metal to the pyridine molecule. These charge-transfer bands lead to a resonant surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement of ~10⁴. This work suggests a basis for designing and synthesizing SERS substrate materials based on actinide-embedded gold superatom models.