2007/01/12 by Oleg A. Yeshchenko, Yeshchenko, Oleg A., Igor Dmytruk +5
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0701276
openalex publication_date 2007/01/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We report size-dependent melting of spherical copper nanoparticles embedded into silica matrix. Based on the temperature dependence of the surface plasmon resonance energy and its width we observe two distinct melting regimes. For particles smaller than 20 nm the absorption spectrum changes monotonically with the temperature, and this allows us to assume the gradual solid-liquid phase transition (melting) of the nanoparticles or existence of superheated solid nanoparticles. In contrast, for nanoparticles larger than 20 nm, we observe a jump-like increase of the bandwidth and non-monotonic dependence of surface plasmon energy at the temperatures below the bulk melting point. This indicates that the melting of large nanoparticles is a first-order phase transition similar to the melting of bulk copper.