Size dependence of vacancy formation energy of metallic nanoparticles

A method is developed to account for size dependence of the vacancy formation energy of metallic nanoparticles, the input parameters of this method are surface energy, atom radius and shear module of the corresponding bulk material. Based on this method, we have calculated the size dependence of vacancy formation energy of gold nanoparticles, the calculated results show that the vacancy formation energy decreases with decreasing of particle size, which qualitatively agrees with the results given by the melting point variation of nanoparticles. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.