Shrinking via the vacancy mechanism, of a hollow mono-atomic nanosphere, was described. Using Gibbs-Thomson boundary conditions, an exact solution was obtained for the kinetic equation in the quasi steady-state within the linear approximation. The collapse time, as a function of the geometrical size of a hollow nanosphere, was found. An extension to hollow binary alloy nanospheres was also made.

Shrinking Kinetics by Vacancy Diffusion of a Pure Element Hollow Nanosphere. A.V.Evteev, E.V.Levchenko, I.V.Belova, G.E.Murch: Philosophical Magazine, 2007, 87[25], 3787-96