Role of temperature in the formation and growth of gold monoatomic chains: A molecular dynamics study

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. The effect of temperature on the formation and growth of monoatomic chains is investigated by extensive molecular dynamics simulations using a semiempirical potential based on the second-moment approximation to the tight-binding Hamiltonian. Gold nanowires, with an aspect ratio of ∼13 and a cross section of ∼1 nm 2 , are stretched at a rate of 3 m/s in the range of temperatures 5–600 K with 50 initial configurations per temperature. A detailed study on the probability to form monoatomic chains (MACs) is presented. Two domains are apparent in our simulations: one at T < 100 K, where MACs develop from crystalline disorder at the constriction, and the other at T > 100 K, where MACs form as a consequence of plastic deformation of the nanowire. Our results show that the average length of the formed MACs maximizes at T =150 K, which is supported by simple energy arguments.