Molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations and the Stillinger-Weber three-body potential are used to study the growth and stability of silicon clusters of diameters from 2 to 5 nm embedded in the melt. Our simulations show that the melting temperature of such nano-clusters is lower than the bulk melting temperature by an amount proportional to the inverse of the cluster size. We also show that the nature of the kinetics of such small Si clusters is essentially the same as that of the homoepitaxial growth. In particular, we show that the mobility of the highly-curved crystal-liquid interface is controlled by diffusion in the adjacent melt, and is characterized by the same activation energy.
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