ROLE OF «MAGIC» HCP NUMBERS IN STABILITY OF THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF Ag89 AND Ag153 NANOCLUSTERS

Abstract

Currently, silver is actively used in microelectronics, mainly due to its high electrical and thermal conductivity. Taking into account the processes of interaction between a metal and a light wave (plasmon effects) gives completely new technical applications of silver. These applications are made possible by the strong interaction between incident light and free electrons in nanostructures. By now, it has already become clear that the size, shape, and structure of nanoparticles determine their plasmon properties, including resonance frequencies. Therefore, by adjusting the size, appearance of the metal nanostructure and its internal structure, it is possible to control light with a very high degree of accuracy. In this work, the boundaries of thermal stability of various initial structural phases in small silver clusters with the number of atoms corresponding to the «magic» numbers of the hcp structure were studied by the molecular dynamics method using the modified tight-binding potential TB-SMA (second moment approximation of tight-binding). It was shown that the nature of thermally induced structural transitions in the groups of nanoclusters under study differs sharply. This fact can make it possible to create small silver clusters with the required internal structure.

Keywords

• nanoclusters
• silver
• computer simulation
• «magic» numbers
• hcp structure
• tight-binding