Poisson effect driven anomalous lattice expansion in metal nanoshells

摘要

Surface stress can have profound effects on nanoscale materials and can lead to a contraction of the lattice in nanoparticles to compensate for the under-coordination of the surface atoms. The effect of elastic properties like Poisson's ratio can be accentuated in lower dimensional systems. The current study focuses on hollow metal nanoshells (MNSs), wherein there is interplay between the surface stresses existing in the inner and outer surfaces. Using a two scale computational method and transmission electron microscopy, we not only show a lattice expansion (in the radial direction) due to purely surface stress effects in a metallic system but also discover anomalous lattice expansion in the case of very thin walled MNSs. We argue that this effect, wherein the stress in the outer surface causes expansion in the radial lattice parameter (instead of compression), is a Poisson effect driven phenomenon. Although Ni nanoshells are used as an illustrative system for the studies, we generalize this effect for all metal nanoshells.