Cooling rate effects on structure and thermodynamics of amorphous nanoparticles

Cooling rate effects on structure and thermodynamics of amorphous nanoparticles were studied in a spherical model using Molecular Dynamics (MD) method. The good equilibrium melts are cooling down by three different cooling rates in order to observe the cooling rate effects. We find that cooling rate effects on thermodynamic quantities such as potential energy and surface energy are more pronounced than those for static quantities. Microstructure of amorphous nanoparticles is analyzed via radial distribution function (RDF) and coordination number distributions. Relatively weak cooling rate effects on such quantities are found. Microstructure of surface and core of amorphous nanoparticles are analyzed.