Study of the melting of transition metal nanoclusters and their application to the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) model

It is important to understand the process of Carbon nanotube (CNT) nucleation to control the process and produce carbon nanotubes that can be used in an application. The properties of CNTs are despondent on the melting characteristic of transition metal nanoclusters which serve as catalyst in CNT nucleation.;The objective of this work is to study the effects of size of the metallic catalyst particles on the melting point of transition metal nanoclusters. The dependence of melting is assumed to be linearly dependent on the inverse of the size of the nanocluster. This observation was confirmed through simulation. It was also the hypotheses of this work that (1) transition metal nanoclusters of Fe and Ni undergo partial melting rather than complete melting and (2) while melting, the surface of the nanocluster melts before the core of a nanocluster.;The partial melting of nanoclusters was studied primarily using molecular dynamics simulations (MDS). This study would also validate the some aspects of VLS model. Preliminary experimentation will be carried out by using the physical vapor deposition (PVD) process to create catalyst surface and catalyst break-up in a reactive ion etch (RIE) chamber. The CNT growth was achieved in a thermal and plasma enhanced CVD chamber. After confirmation of the CNT growth, the transition metal nanocluster melting study was carried out by MDS.