Computer Simulated Cold Welding of Metal Nanowires

Metallic contacts are of great importance in electronic devives, the ability of welding them without temperature change is quite remarkable and of interest. Recently cold welding was achieved in gold and silver nanowires (NWs) with diameters in the range of 4 to 10 nm [1]. In the present work we use computer simulations to produce cold welding in gold, silver and silver-gold NWs at room temperature. We used molecular dynamics with many body effective potentials based on the embedded-atom method EAM using the LAMMPS code to simulate first the braking of gold and silver NWs. The two produced NWs are then cold welded and similarly as occurred in the experiments the newly welded NWs showed fcc structures as the printine samples. The structural analysis is done with two independent methods [2] and strain stress curves of the breaking and welding are present. Our computer simulation compare very well with the experiments. This work is supported by CNPq CAPES and FAPESP and FAEPEX. ZSP is supported by CAPES. CENAPAD-SP and IFGW are acknowledged for computer time. \\[4pt] [1] Y. Lu, \textit{et al}. Nature Nanotechnology 5, 218 - 224 (2010)\\[0pt] [2] E. Z. da Silva and Z.S. Pereira, Phys. Rev. B \textbf{81}, 195417 (2010).