Structure stabilities and transitions in polyhedral metal nanocrystals: An atomic-bond-relaxation approach

Abstract

We present an atomic-bond-relaxation (ABR) method to illustrate a deeper insight on structure stabilities and transitions of metal nanocrystals with polyhedral structure based on the thermodynamic consideration. It has been found that the end effects in polyhedral nanocrystals induced by the atoms located at edges, side facets, and vertexes play the dominant roles for their structure performances. The theoretical predictions are well consistent with the experimental measurements and simulations, which suggest the ABR model can be an effective method to understand solid-solid phase transition of polyhedral metal nanocrystals.