A molecular dynamics simulation of multi-wall platinum nanowires

Structural formation of platinum (Pt) nanowire (NW) is investigated using the classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulation method. A type of multi-shell Pt NWs is obtained from the simulations. These NWs consist of multi walls formed by rolling fee (111) triangular network sheets. Experimental evidence of existence of such multi-wall Pt NWs has been reported (Kondo and Takayanagi, Science 289, 606, 2000). The simulations begin from initially random atom configurations. The initial configuration is minimized by the steepest descent method, and assigned a temperature of 601 K with a Maxwell-Boltzmann random distribution. Then simulated annealing is applied such that the temperature of the system is reduced gradually to 1 K and a stable NW structure is obtained. Structural characteristics of these Pt NWs, i.e. the lattice parameters, are further examined and presented in this paper.