Melting behavior of ultrathin titanium nanowires

The thermal stability and melting behavior of ultrathin titanium nanowires with multishell cylindrical structures are studied by using empirical molecular-dynamic simulation. The melting temperatures of titanium nanowires show clear dependence on wire sizes and structures. For the nanowire thinner than 1.2 nm, there is no clear characteristic of first-order phase transition during the melting, implying a coexistence of solid and liquid phases due to finite-size effect. An interesting structural transformation from helical multishell cylindrical to bulklike rectangular is observed in the melting process of a thicker nanowire with 1.7 nm diameter.