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| Home>Research>MC2-Crystalline Materials under Stress>Size effects in nanometer objects | ||||||||||||||
Size effects in nanometer-sized objects |
| Magali Benoit, M.J. Casanove, Nicolas Combe, François Demangeot, Christophe Gatel, Yolande Kihn, Pierre Lecante, Joseph Morillo, Christian Roucau, Hao Tang. |
| We aim at analysing the influence of size reduction on the properties of low-dimensional objects as ultra-thin layers, interfaces, nanoparticles, epitaxial islands, wires… These nanomaterials share the particularity of a strong contribution of surface atoms which can represent more than 50% of the total number of atoms. More sensitive to their environment and in particular to surface stresses, these materials adopt structural and chemical orders that can strongly differ from the ones in the bulk material. In parallel, their macroscopic properties are considerably enhanced, or even completely original. Our studies strongly rely on a strong coupling between experimental and modelling approaches, a combination that is essential for investigating nanometer-sized objects. Both modelling and experimental studies rely on an appropriate combination of complementary techniques.
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 420-atom clusters after MCM simulated annealing from 1600~K. Top: general view, middle: cross-sections, bottom: histogram of the distribution of distances to the centre of the clusters (in nm). - Europhysics Letters 73, 885 (2006) |
HREM images of nanometer-sized PtRu particles giving evidence for a fcc to hcp phase transition mechanism through the introduction of twin boundaries in particles whose size remains below 2 nm.– Phys. Rev. B63, 235407 (2001) |
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Our research topics are presently developed in two different research operations. The first one is dedicated to the study of metallic nanoparticles and thin films. The second concerns low-dimensional ionic or covalent materials. |
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Key-words : nanoparticles, nanoalloys, metallic alloys, size effects, low dimensionality, surface stress, ancient ceramics, optical properties, magnetic properties, catalysis, modelling. |
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