Freezing of Cu nanoclusters studied by molecular dynamics simulation

Freezing processes of liquid Cu nanoclusters with atoms of 147,309 and 561 are performed by means of molecular dynamics, which show that the structures of the obtained solid nanoclusters at room temperature arc, governed by the cooling rate and the clusters' sizes: the smaller clusters and the slower cooling rate bring the icosahedra structures more favorably, and contrarily, for the larger clusters and the faster cooling rate, the face centered cubic structures will be expected in our simulation time. The physical mechanisms of this phenomenon are also discussed in this paper.