Stability of Thin Gold Nano Wires

Various gold nanowires with very small cross-sections (few atoms) have been studied using the Gupta potential. Gold nanowire icosa structure is found to be most stable among structures studied. The values of cohesive energy, Young’s modulus and shear modulus have been computed and all the values (except poisson ratio) are more than that of bulk gold. Another striking observation about gold nanostructures is that the Young’s modulus increases with tube radius whereas shear modulus decreases.