Observation of the fcc-to-hcp transition in ensembles of argon nanoclusters. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Macroscopic ensembles of weakly interacting argon nanoclusters are studied using x-ray diffraction in low vacuum. As the clusters grow by fusion with increasing temperature, their structure transforms from essentially face-centered cubic (fcc) to hexagonal close packed as the cluster size approaches ~10(5) atoms. The transformation involves intermediate orthorhombic phases. These data confirm extant theoretical predictions. They also indicate that growth kinetics and spatial constraints might play an important role in the formation of the fcc structure of bulk rare-gas solids, which still remains puzzling.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

altmetric score

  • 1.75

author list (cited authors)

  • Krainyukova, N. V., Boltnev, R. E., Bernard, E. P., Khmelenko, V. V., Lee, D. M., & Kiryukhin, V.

citation count

  • 34

complete list of authors

  • Krainyukova, NV||Boltnev, RE||Bernard, EP||Khmelenko, VV||Lee, DM||Kiryukhin, V

publication date

  • December 2012