Negating Negative Heat Capacity in Nanoclusters

Abstract

It is shown that negative heat capacity in nanoclusters is an artifact of applying equilibrium thermodynamic formalism on a small system trapped out of equilibrium in a particular structural motif representing only part of the energetically available phase space volume. Trapping may occur in either the canonical or microcanonical ensemble, but it is unavoidable in the microcanonical. A more general consequence of trapping is that all macroscopic quantities determined for nanoclusters will depend on the initial conditions.