Curvature effect on melting and surface melting of crystal from nanovoids

Through consideration of the curvature effect of nanovoids, melting and surface melting temperatures of crystals with negatively curved surfaces are established, which are derived from the melting models of nanoparticles. A good agreement between model predictions and molecular dynamics simulation results for the melting of Ar matrix from nanovoids is found, which confirms that curvature is an important factor to materials' thermodynamics properties. Due to negative curvature. Ar matrix with a nanovoid exhibits higher stability when compared with the corresponding bulk and nanoparticles. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.