Surface and bulk melting of small metal clusters

We present an analytical solution to the two-parabola Landau model, applied to melting of metal particles with sizes in the nanoscale range. The results provide an analytical understanding of the recently observed pseudo-crystalline phase of nanoscale Sn particles. Liquid skin formation as a precursor of melting is found to occur only for particles with radii greater than an explicitly given critical radius. The size dependences of the melting temperature, and of the latent heat, have been calculated, and a quantitative agreement is found with the experiment on tin particles.