| We have carried out Molecular Dynamics simulations to study the thermal stability and melting behavior of gold nanoclusters and gold nanorods. The surface is found to play a very important role in both gold nanomaterials. Upon cooling from the liquid, we find that gold nanoclusters with 600--3000 atoms crystallize into a Mackay icosahedron. Upon heating, the {lcub}111{rcub} facets on the surface of the Mackay icosahedral gold nanoclusters soften but do not premelt below the bulk melting temperature. We attribute this surface softening to the increasing mobility of vertex and edge atoms with temperature, which leads to inter-layer and intra-layer diffusion, and a shrinkage of the average facet size. Upon heating, our simulated gold nanorods undergo a shape transformation preceding the melting transition. The shape transformation is induced by a minimization of the surface free energy, and is accompanied by a complete reconstruction of the internal structure driven by the surface change. During the transformation, the atoms on the end caps of the rod move to the sides of the rods, leading the rods to be shorter and wider. After the transformation, the surface of the stable intermediate state rod is mostly covered by the more stable {lcub}111{rcub} facets, other than the less stable {lcub}110{rcub} and {lcub}100{rcub} facets covering the sides of the initial constructed rod. |
