%0 Journal Article
%@ 0021-9606
%A Sommerfeld, T
%A Gardner, SD
%A DeFusco, A
%A Jordan, KD
%D 2006
%F pittir:16079
%J Journal of Chemical Physics
%N 17
%T Low-lying isomers and finite temperature behavior of (H<inf>2</inf>O) <inf>6</inf><sup>-</sup>
%U http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/16079/
%V 125
%X (H2 O) 6- appears as a "magic" number water cluster in (H2 O) n- mass spectra. The structure of the (H2 O) 6- isomer dominating the experimental population has been established only recently [N. I. Hammer, J. Phys. Chem. A 109, 7896 (2005)], and the most noteworthy characteristic of this isomer is the localization of the excess electron in the vicinity of a double-acceptor monomer. In the present work, we use a quantum Drude model to characterize the low-energy isomers and the finite temperature properties of (H2 O) 6-. Comparison with ab initio calculations shows that the use of a water model employing distributed polarizabilities and distributed repulsive sites is necessary to correctly reproduce the energy ordering of the low-lying isomers. Both the simulations and the ab initio calculations predict that there are several isomers of (H2 O) 6- significantly lower in energy than the experimentally observed species, suggesting that the experimental distribution is far from equilibrium. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.