Temperature and Size Effect on the Mechanical Properties of Indium Phosphide Nanowire: An Atomistic Study

The mechanical properties of Indium Phosphide (InP) nanowire is an emerging issue due to its application as optoelectronic material. In this paper, atomistic simulations are conducted to find thermo-mechanical properties of Indium Phosphide (InP) nanowire under uniaxial tension. Vashishta potential is employed to define the atomic interactions between the atoms. The effect of variation of temperatures (100K-500K) on the tensile response of the InP nanowires is investigated in this study. Also, size effect is investigated for the temperature of 300 K by varying the cross sectional area of the nanowire. Results suggest that increment of temperature results in the failure of InP nanowire at a lower value of stress (from 8.60 GPa at 100K to 6.50 GPa at 500K) along with the decrement of Young's modulus. Results also suggest that size has little effect on the tensile properties of this nanowire. Finally, failure mechanisms of indium phosphide nanowire are also investigated from the atomic images obtained from the simulation results.