Melting temperature of metallic nanoparticles embedded in a rigid matrix

Phase transformations of freestanding nanoparticles are well analyzed. The situation is different for particles embedded in a second matrix. The special case of melting and crystallizing of nanoparticles in a rigid matrix is the topic of this study based on the energy balance, resulting in a size dependency of these phase transformations primarily on variation of the materials properties with the particle size. Therefore, an important outcome of this study is the result that thermodynamic data of bulk materials are insufficient to describe phenomena connected to nanoparticles. The differences may be significant.