https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80281-6
Regular Article
The effect of size and composition on structural transitions in monometallic nanoparticles★
1
King’s College, Physics Department,
Strand
WC2R 2LS,
London, UK
2
Universiti Saints, School of Physics,
11800
USM,
Penang, Malaysia
a e-mail: kevin.rossi@kcl.ac.uk
Received:
18
May
2017
Received in final form:
10
July
2017
Published online: 12
February
2018
Predicting the morphological stability of nanoparticles is an essential step towards the accurate modelling of their chemophysical properties. Here we investigate solid–solid transitions in monometallic clusters of 0.5–2.0 nm diameter at finite temperatures and we report the complex dependence of the rearrangement mechanism on the nanoparticle’s composition and size. The concerted Lipscomb’s Diamond-Square-Diamond mechanisms which connects the decahedral or the cuboctahedral to the icosahedral basins, take place only below a material dependent critical size above which surface diffusion prevails and leads to low-symmetry and defected shapes still belonging to the initial basin.
© The Author(s) 2018. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
