Anisotropy driven ultrafast nanocluster burrowing

TL;DR

This study investigates ultrafast, anisotropy-driven nanocluster burrowing into substrates at low energies, revealing a ballistic penetration mechanism that surpasses traditional collisional explanations, with implications for nanomaterial engineering.

Contribution

It uncovers a novel, anisotropy-dependent burrowing mechanism for nanoclusters at low impact energies, supported by molecular dynamics simulations across various material pairs.

Findings

Nanoclusters can penetrate substrates at impact energies as low as 0.5 eV/atom.

Cluster burrowing occurs with nearly constant speed, far beyond the impact energy range.

Asymmetry in burrowing behavior depends on cluster/substrate material pairing.

Abstract

We explore the occurrence of low-energy and low-temperature transient cluster burrowing leading to intact cluster inclusions. In particular, the anomalously fast (ballistic) Pt nanocluster implantation into Al and Ti substrates has been found by molecular dynamics simulations using a tight-binding many-body potential with the 1-5 eV/atom low impact energy. Similar behavior has also been found for many other cluster/substrate couples such as Cu/Al and Ni/Ti, Co/Ti, etc. In particular, in Ni/Ti at already $\sim 0.5$ eV/atom impact energy burrowing takes place. At this few eV/atom low impact energy regime instead of the expected stopping at the surface we find the propagation of the cluster through a thin Al slab as thick as $\sim 50$ $\hbox{\AA}$ with a nearly constant speed ($\propto 1$ eV/atom). Hence the cluster moves far beyond the range of the impact energy which suggests that the mechanism of cluster burrowing can not be explained simply by collisional cascade effects. In the couples with reversed succession (e.g. Ti/Pt, Al/Pt) no burrowing has been found, the clusters remain on the surface (the asymmetry of burrowing). We argue that cluster penetration occurs at few eV/atom impact energy when the cluster/substrate interaction is size-mismatched and mass anisotropic atomically.