Dynamics and stability of icosahedral Fe-Pt nanoparticles

Abstract

The structure, dynamics and stability of Fe-Pt nanoparticles have been investigated using DFT-based techniques: total energy calculations and DFT molecular dynamics. The investigated systems included multi-shell and disordered nanoparticles of iron and platinum. The study is concerned with icosahedral particles with magic number of atoms (55): iron-terminated Fe$_{43}$Pt$_{12}$, platinum-terminated Fe$_{12}$Pt$_{43}$, and disordered Fe$_{27}$Pt$_{28}$. Additionally, the Fe$_6$Pt$_7$ cluster has been investigated to probe behaviour of extremely small Fe-Pt particles. Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed for a few temperatures between $T=150-1000$ K. The calculations revealed high structural instability of the Fe-terminated nanoparticles and a strong stabilising effect of the Pt-termination in the shell-type icosahedral particles. The platinum termination prevented disordering of the particle even at $T=1000$ K indicating very high melting temperatures of these Fe-Pt icosahedral structures. The analysis of evolution of the radial distribution function has shown significant tendency of Pt atoms to move to the outside layer of the particles -- even in the platinum deficient cases.