Shrinking kinetics by vacancy diffusion of a pure element hollow nanosphere

Abstract

In this paper, shrinking via the vacancy mechanism of a hollow mono-atomic nanosphere is described. Using Gibbs–Thomson boundary conditions, an exact solution is obtained for the kinetic equation in quasi steady-state at the linear approximation. Collapse time as a function of the geometrical size of a hollow nanosphere is found. An extension to hollow binary alloy nanospheres is also made. Previous Monte Carlo simulations of this problem are discussed.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project Grants Schemes) for its support of this research.