The structural and electronic properties of small tungsten nanoclusters Wn (n ? 2–16) were investigated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. For the W nanocluster, the lowest-energy structures were first obtained by the basin-hopping method (BH) with the tight-binding many-body potential for a bulk tungsten material. These structures were further optimized by DFT calculations in order to find better parameters of the tight-binding (TB) and Finnis–Sinclair (FS) potential appropriate for W nanoclusters. The values of
binding energy and second-order energy difference reveal that the structure W11 has a higher stability than those of other sizes. The vertical ionization potential (VIP), adiabatic electron affinity (AEA) and
HOMO–LUMO gap are also discussed for W nanoclusters of different sizes. In addition, large size nanoclusters Wn (n ? 30–120) are obtained by the BH method, and a comparison of the structural properties determined by TB and FS potentials are represented with Honeycutt–Andersen index analysis.
