Effect of Grain Size on Volume Thermal Expansion of Nanomaterials

Size effects on Volume thermal expansion of nanomaterials. The experimental measurements show that volume thermal expansion of nanosolids is larger than those of their bulk counterparts. On considering the surface effect, a simple model is derived to study the size dependence of volume thermal expansion of nanomaterials for spherical nanoparticles, nanowire and nanofilms. The size dependence of Zn nanowire is found to present the good agreement with the existing experimental results. We have also computed the size dependence volume thermal expansion of Si and Ni for spherical nanosolids, nanowires and nanofilms. It is shown that volume thermal expansion of nanomaterials decreases with increase in the grain size.