A thermodynamic model for the melting of supported metal nanoparticles

Abstract

We construct a simple thermodynamic model to describe the melting of a supported metal nanoparticle with a spherically curved free surface both with and without surface melting. We use the model to investigate the results of recent molecular dynamics simulations, which suggest the melting temperature of a supported metal particle is the same as that of a free spherical particle with the same surface curvature. Our model shows that this is only the case when the contact angles of the supported solid and liquid particles are similar. This is also the case for the temperature at which surface melting begins.