Self-healing of fractured one dimensional brittle nanostructures

Self-healing of fractured one dimensional brittle nanostructures

Recent experiments have shown that fractured GaAs nanowires can heal spontaneously inside a transmission electron microscope. Here we perform molecular-dynamics simulations to investigate the atomic mechanism of this self-healing process. As the distance between two fracture surfaces becomes less th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wang, Jun, Lu, Chungsheng, Wang, Q., Xiao, P., Ke, F., Bai, Y., Shen, Y., Wang, Y., Liao, X., Gao, H.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd. 2012
Subjects:
nanoscale science
low-D systems
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/30456
Description
Summary:Recent experiments have shown that fractured GaAs nanowires can heal spontaneously inside a transmission electron microscope. Here we perform molecular-dynamics simulations to investigate the atomic mechanism of this self-healing process. As the distance between two fracture surfaces becomes less than 1.0 nm, a strong surface attraction is generated by the electrostatic interaction, which results in Ga–As re-bonding at the fracture site and restoration of the nanowire. The results suggest that self-healing might be prevalent in ultrathin one-dimensional nanostructures under near vacuum conditions.

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