Surface Energy and Melting Temperature of Elemental Nanocavities

A model for size-dependent surface energy of elemental nanocavities is proposed in terms of size-dependent cohesive energy. It is found that the surface energy of elemental nanocavities increases with decreasing of the cavity size to several nanometers. The newly built model is validated to be in agreement with that based on some other theories. Moreover, an analytic model is developed to describe the size-dependent melting temperature of elemental nanocavities for the first time. The analytic results show that the melting temperature increases with decreasing of the size of nanocavities. The theoretical predictions confirm well to the available data of argon obtained by molecular dynamics simulations.