Universal Stability and Temperature Dependent Phase Transformation in Group VIIIB-IB Transition Metal FCC Nanowires

VK Sutrakar and DR Mahapatra, JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C, 115, 10394-10398 (2011).

DOI: 10.1021/jp2006815

Atomistic simulation of Ag, Al, Au, Cu, Ni, Pd, and Pt FCC metallic nanowires show a universal FCC -> HCP phase transformation below a critical cross-sectional size, which is reported for the first time in this paper. The newly observed HCP structure is also confirmed from previous experimental results. Above the critical cross-sectional size, initial < 100 >/100 FCC metallic nanowires are found to be metastable. External thermal heating shows the transformation of metastable < 100 >/100 FCC nanowires into < 110 >/111 stable configuration. Size dependent metastability/instability is also correlated with initial residual stresses of the nanowire by use of molecular static simulation using the conjugant gradient method at a temperature of 0 K. It is found that a smaller cross-sectional dimension of an initial FCC nanowire shows instability due to higher initial residual stresses, and the nanowire is transformed into the novel HCP structure. The initial residual stress shows reduction with an increase in the cross-sectional size of the nanowires. A size dependent critical temperature is also reported for metastable FCC nanowires using molecular dynamic, to capture the < 110 >/111 to < 100 >/100 shape memory and pseudoelasticity.

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