Studies of nanocluster coalescence at high temperature

Molecular Dynamics simulations and high resolution electron microscope observations were used to determine the mechanism of nanocluster coalescence in detail. In the simulations, the tight-binding second momentum approximation potential was used to describe the interatomic interactions. The calculations not only reproduced the experimentally observed translation and reorientation during the coalescing process, but also made it possible to determine the time scale of each step in the process and to observe details of the process that could not be obtained from the experiment. For high temperature coalescence, a new mechanism differing from classical theory is proposed.