Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
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Silicon is one of the most important semi conducting materials employed in microelectronic technologies. This chapter is dedicated to review the enormous effort made during the last years to develop confident methods to determinate the geometries and related properties of silicon clusters. Searching employing full global optimization of the energy surface, using techniques like Molecular Dynamics (MD), algorithms, and local optimization of structures built onto generic structural motifs are reported. Hybrid methodologies combining tight-binding (TB) with global optimization methods also contribute to the state of the art in the prediction of the structures, and calculation of properties of silicon clusters, based on all-electron DFT methods are also included.