Cabrera-Mott kinetics of oxidation of metal nanowires

The Cabrera-Mott model, implying that oxidation of a metal is limited by the field-facilitated activated jumps of metal ions at the metal-oxide interface, was originally proposed to interpret growth of thin oxide films on planar metal surfaces. Recently, the model was used to describe oxidation of spherical nanoparticles with small radius of curvature. Here, we analyze oxidation of nanowires. The increase of the oxide thickness with increasing time for a nanowire is shown to be slower than that for a nanoparticle with the same radius, but faster than in the case of a planar surface. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4729059]