Headlines 2007

Clusters consists in a set of several up to million atoms in condensed phase with nanometric finite size. The investigation of their properties as the function of their increasing size is sometimes presented as one way to build a macroscopic condensed world from a gas. This often appears to be too simplistic, because the static and dynamic behavior of clusters has often no equivalence at the macroscopic scale, as they are controlled by their high specific surface and their finite size. These concerns the physical chemistry of the mesoscopic world, as illustrated by the recent experimental study driven by the "Reaction dynamics" group of DRECAM/SPAM-Laboratoire Francis Perrin in collaboration with a theoretician team from Paris VI University.