Bifurcation phenomenon in molecular dynamics model of coalescence/sintering on the nanoscale

Abstract

Using the isothermal molecular dynamics, coalescence/sintering of Au nanoparticles (NPs) was simulated. We have found that the solid NP sintering scenario is switched to the coalescence scenario not at the NP melting temperature T m exactly but at a lower temperature T 0 ≈ 0.9T m interpreted as the critical temperature corresponding to a coalescence/sintering bifurcation phenomenon: in the temperature range from T 0 – 2 K to T 0 + 2 K to the resulting (daughter) NPs of the same size can have either liquid-like or crystalline structure after coalescence/sintering at the same fixed temperature.