A general treatment of the Gibbs-Thomson effect for a hollow nanosphere was presented. It allowed for the existence of a vacancy composition profile across the nanoshell to be defined by a continuously decreasing function, as well as by a continuous function with a minimum. The range for the controlling parameter of the vacancy motion within a binary alloy nanoshell was determined in terms of the phenomenological coefficients as well as of the measurable tracer-diffusion coefficients, DA*, DB*, of the components. On the basis of a theoretical description and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, it was demonstrated, that for a hollow random binary alloy nanosphere with an equi-atomic (initially homogeneous) composition and neglecting the radial dependence of vacancy-formation free-energy, the controlling parameter of the shrinking rate in the limiting case, DA* >> DB*, could be estimated with reasonable accuracy as being the geometrical mean of the tracer diffusion coefficients of the components.

Shrinking Kinetics by Vacancy Diffusion of Hollow Binary Alloy Nanospheres Driven by the Gibbs-Thomson Effect. A.V.Evteev, E.V.Levchenko, I.V.Belova, G.E.Murch: Philosophical Magazine, 2008, 88[10], 1525-41