The thermal behavior of free and alumina-supported iron-carbon nanoparticles is investigated via molecular dynamics simulations, in which the effect of the substrate is treated with a simple Morse potential fitted to ab initio data. We observe that the presence of the substrate raises the melting temperature of medium and large Fe1−xCx nanoparticles (x = 0 − 0.16, N = 80 − 1000, nonmagic numbers) by 40-60 K; it also plays an important role in defining the ground state of smaller Fe nanoparticles (N = 50 − 80). The main focus of our study is the investigation of Fe-C phase diagrams as a function of the nanoparticle size. We find that as the cluster size decreases in the 1.1-1.6-nm-diameter range the eutectic point shifts significantly not only toward lower temperatures, as expected from the Gibbs-Thomson law, but also toward lower concentrations of C. The strong dependence of the maximum C solubility on the Fe-C cluster size may have important implications for the catalytic growth of carbon nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition.

First principles and tight binding Monte Carlo simulations show that junctions between single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and nickel clusters are on the cluster surface, and not at subsurface sites, irrespective of the nanotube chirality, temperature, and whether the docking is gentle or forced. Gentle docking helps to preserve the pristine structure of the SWNT at the metal interface, whereas forced docking may partially dissolve the SWNT in the cluster. This is important for SWNT-based electronics and SWNT-seeded regrowth.