Questioning the existence of a unique ground-state structure for Si clusters

Density functional and quantum Monte Carlo calculations challenge the existence of a unique ground-state structure for certain Si clusters. For Si clusters with more than a dozen atoms the lowest ten isomers are close in energy and for some clusters entropic effects change the energetic ordering of the configurations. Isotope pure configurations with rotational symmetry and symmetric configurations containing one additional isotope are disfavored by these effects. Comparisons with experiment are thus difficult since a mixture of configurations is to be expected at thermal equilibrium.