Breakdown of Kubo relation in Pt-Cu nanoparticle

Abstract

Nanoparticles were predicted to exhibit unique physical properties due to quantum size effects, but their identification remains difficult. According to Kubo's theory, the gap size is inversely correlated with both the density of states at the Fermi energy and the number of atoms in the particle. Previously, we confirmed that the particle size and magnetic field dependence of NMR anomaly temperature is consistent with the estimated "Kubo" gap. Here, we investigated the density-of-states dependence in the Pt$_{1-x}$Cu$_{x}$ nanoparticles. While an enhancement of nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate $1/T_1$ at low temperatures was clearly observed for the Pt-rich nanoparticles, such behavior was abruptly suppressed in the Cu-rich nanoparticles. Furthermore, the NMR anomaly temperature is nearly unchanged with varying the density of states. Our findings indicate that the quantum size effect contains more profound physics than just the ones predicted by Kubo.