Fast coalescence of metallic glass nanoparticles

Glass-like nanoparticles merge faster than conventional ones

27 February 2020

Metallic glass nanoparticles— nanoparticles consisting of metal atoms with in a disordered, glass-like arrangement — coalesce more rapidly than conventional metal nanoparticles, which have regular, crystalline structures.

Metallic glass nanoparticles are potentially useful for many applications, including catalysis and biomedical materials. Like all nanoparticles, metallic glass nanoparticles coalesce with each other over time, which considerably alters their properties. But not much is known about their coalescence behaviour.

Now, researchers from the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University have used transmission electron microscopy to examine the coalescence of metallic glass nanoparticles. This analysis revealed that metallic glass nanoparticles coalesce faster than their conventional counterparts.

Computer simulations revealed that these different coalescence behaviours spring from the different mobilities of atoms on the nanoparticles’ surfaces, which in turn arises from the different nanoparticle morphologies.

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References

1. Nature Communications 10, 5249 (2019). doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13054-z