Molecular dynamics simulation of Ag–Cu cluster growth on a thin polymer film

Abstract

We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the growth of silver–copper nanoparticles on a polymeric surface during sputter deposition. The simulation procedure extends a previous implementation for gold nanoparticles to bimetallic nanoparticles. Making use of an accelerated version of MD, the timescales of the simulations become comparable to those of an actual deposition process, which may take several minutes in experiments. While silver and copper are known to be immiscible in the bulk, we trace the concentration profiles of Ag and Cu atoms in the clusters for film thicknesses up to 1.8 nm and are thus able to investigate the early stages of phase separation on the nanoscale.