Modeling for the study of thermophysical properties of metallic nanoparticles

Abstract

Successful description and explanation of thermophysical properties at the nano level is a task of great challenge even yet today. Although great effort has been made by pioneer workers and scientists in this field but still the exact model for the prediction and explanation of these properties is lagging. In the current work, we have proposed a new model to calculate the thermophysical properties like specific heat, melting enthalpy, and melting entropy of nanomaterials, which are calculated with the help of a cohesive energy model including shape effect in addition to structure of materials at the nano level. The relaxation factor due to the dangling bond at the surface of nanoparticles is taken under consideration. The obtained results using this model is fully consistent with the available experimental findings for the above said thermophysical properties for silver (Ag), copper (Cu), Palladium (Pd), Aluminium (Al), and Indium (In). This encouraging idea has also been used to predict the nature of variation of above mentioned important thermodynamic properties of other materials at their nano level.