PNNL

Abstract

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was used to study the melting behavior of GaN nanowires with Stillinger-Webber (SW) potential. Our results reveal that the melting of nanowires starts from the surface, and rapidly extends to the inner regions of nanowires as temperature increases. The melting temperature of GaN nanowires is lower than that of the bulk GaN, which may associate with large surfaces of nanowires. The melting temperatures increase to saturation values ~3100K and ~2900K when the diameters of nanowires are larger than 3.14 and 4.14 nm for nanowires with [100]- and [110]-oriented lateral facets, respectively.