The title question is motivated by the fact that extremely small thiolated-gold clusters such as Au 20 (SR) 16 have been isolated, but their undetermined structures cannot be fully rationalized by the present knowledge derived from single-crystal structures of larger clusters. One needs to go beyond the linear monomer (RSAuSR) and V-shaped dimer (RSAuSRAuSR) motifs that were found to protect larger clusters. We hypothesize that the U-shaped trimer motif (RSAuSRAuSRAuSR) is required to protect the core of some extremely small thiolated-gold clusters, which have about 20 or fewer Au atoms. We test this hypothesis by proposing structural models for Au 10 (SR) 8 based on two trimer motifs protecting a tetrahedral Au 4 core and for Au 20 (SR) 16 based on four trimer motifs protecting an Au 8 core.
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Jiang et al. (2009) studied this question.