Mechanical behavior of gold nanowires with a multishell helical structure

Abstract

Mechanical behavior of multishell gold nanowires has been carried out by molecular dynamics simulation. This work studies the mechanical properties of three types of multishell helical structure, i.e., 7-1, 11-4, and 14-7-1. The results reveal that the Young's modulus increases as the radius of the nanowire decreases. For the modeled multishell helical structures, the yielding stress and Young's modulus of compression are larger than those of elongation. From the tensile tests of different kinds of multishell structures, one-atom chains can be formed in all three modeled structures before the nanowires rupture.