Communication: Kinetics of chemical ordering in Ag-Au and Ag-Ni nanoalloys.
The energy landscape and kinetics of medium-sized Ag-Au and Ag-Ni nanoalloy particles are explored via a discrete path sampling approach, focusing on rearrangements connecting regions differing in chemical order. The highly miscible Ag27Au28 supports a large number of nearly degenerate icosahedral homotops. The transformation from reverse core-shell to core-shell involves large displacements away from the icosahedron through elementary steps corresponding to surface diffusion and vacancy formation. The immiscible Ag42Ni13 naturally forms an asymmetric core-shell structure, and about 10 eV is required to extrude the nickel core to the surface. The corresponding transformation occurs via a long and smooth sequence of surface displacements. For both systems the rearrangement kinetics exhibit Arrhenius behavior. These results are discussed in the light of experimental observations.
ILM, CNRS UMR 5306 and Université Lyon 1, 43 Bd du 11 Novembre 1918, F69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France.
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