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Surface-stress-induced phase transformation in metal nanowires

Nature Materials volume 2, pages 656–660 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Several researchers1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 have demonstrated, through experiments and analysis, that the structure and properties of nanometre-scale materials can be quite different to those of bulk materials due to the effect of surfaces. Here we use atomistic simulations to study a surface-stress-induced phase transformation in gold nanowires. The emergence of the transformation is controlled by wire size, initial orientation, boundary conditions, temperature and initial cross-sectional shape. For a <100> initial crystal orientation and wire cross-sectional area below 4 nm2, surface stresses alone cause gold nanowires to transform from a face-centred-cubic structure to a body-centred-tetragonal structure. The transformation occurs roughly when the compressive stress caused by tensile surface-stress components in the length direction exceeds the compressive stress required to transform bulk gold to its higher energy metastable crystal structure.

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Figure 1: The phase transformation in the 1.83 nm × 1.83 nm <100> wire.
Figure 2: The dynamic progression of the phase transformation in the 1.83 nm × 1.83 nm nanowire at 100 K.
Figure 3: Uniaxial stress–strain curve of bulk gold under compression and unloading curves from paths (2) and (3) (see text).

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by Sandia National Laboratories and the National Science Foundation, USA. The authors thank Jon Zimmerman for his insightful discussions and guidance.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, 80309, Colorado, USA

    Jiankuai Diao, Ken Gall & Martin L. Dunn

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  1. Jiankuai Diao
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Correspondence to Jiankuai Diao.

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Diao, J., Gall, K. & Dunn, M. Surface-stress-induced phase transformation in metal nanowires. Nature Mater 2, 656–660 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat977

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