Modeling the Melting Enthalpy of Nanomaterials

We report a theoretical investigation, free of any adjustable parameters, concerning the size and shape effects on the melting enthalpy, for different shapes of free-standing nanostructures. To easily calculate the nanoscale melting enthalpy for a wide range of metals and semiconductors, a convenient shape parameter (alpha(shape)) is defined. A comparison between the Guisbiers et al., Jiang et al., and Shandiz et al. models with experimental and molecular dynamics results is done. Until D similar to 10 nm, the size effect on the melting entropy can be neglected.