Issue 10, 2018

Lattice induced crystallization of nanodroplets: the role of finite-size effects and substrate properties in controlling polymorphism

Abstract

Targeting specific technological applications requires the control of nanoparticle properties, especially the crystalline polymorph. Freezing a nanodroplet deposited on a solid substrate leads to the formation of crystalline structures. We study the inherent mechanisms underlying this general phenomenon by means of molecular dynamics simulations. Our work shows that different crystal structures can be selected by finely tuning the solid substrate lattice parameter. Indeed, while for our system, face-centered cubic is usually the most preponderant structure, the growth of two distinct polymorphs, hexagonal centered packing and body-centered cubic, was also observed even when the solid substrate was face-centered cubic. Finally, we also demonstrated that the growth of hexagonal centered packing is conditioned by the appearance of large enough body-centered cubic clusters thus suggesting the presence of a cross-nucleation pathway. Our results provide insights into the impact of nanoscale effects and solid substrate properties towards the growth of polymorphic nanomaterials.

Graphical abstract: Lattice induced crystallization of nanodroplets: the role of finite-size effects and substrate properties in controlling polymorphism

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
21 Nov 2017
Accepted
19 Dec 2017
First published
26 Feb 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2018,10, 4921-4926

Lattice induced crystallization of nanodroplets: the role of finite-size effects and substrate properties in controlling polymorphism

J. Lam and J. F. Lutsko, Nanoscale, 2018, 10, 4921 DOI: 10.1039/C7NR08705E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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