  Reactivity of Aluminum Clusters has been found to exhibit size sensitive
variations. This work is motivated by a recent report1 predicting higher
reactivity of melted Aluminum clusters towards the N2 molecule as compared to
the non-melted Al clusters. We attempt to understand the underlying electronic
and structural factors influencing the adsorption of N2 molecule (a
prerequisite for the reactivity) on ground state geometry (a non-melted
structure) of various Al clusters. The results show that the adsorption energy
is of the order of 8-10 kcal/mol and does not vary with respect to the cluster
size and the electronic properties of the ground state geometry. The structural
and electronic properties of high energy conformations of Al clusters (a melted
cluster) are also analyzed to explain their higher reactivity towards N2
molecule.
