Effect of bond population on the elasticity of tungsten nanowires: Ab initio calculation

Abstract

Using density functional theory, we studied the atomic, electronic and elastic properties of tungsten nanowires oriented in the [111] direction. It was found that the Young’s modulus for nanowires is 1.8 times smaller than the value for bulk tungsten. Moreover, we show that fine tungsten nanowire is a semiconductor with a band gap of 0.09eV.