ABSTRACT
Elemental silicon clusters, however, are unsuitable as building blocks for future nanomaterials, since their dangling bonds make them chemically reactive (Röthlisberger et al. 1994). Contrary to carbon, the formation of silicon fullerenes and nanotubes is disfavored due to the tendency of silicon to prefer sp3-rather than sp2-like hybridization. A possible approach to stabilize a silicon cage is to locate a guest atom in the center of the cluster.
