Structural evolution of copper-silver bimetallic nanowires with core-shell structure revealed by molecular dynamics simulations

The molecular dynamics simulation method is used to investigate the tensile deformation mechanism of Cu-Ag core-shell nanowires. The results for the actual structure of the Cu-Ag core-shell nanowires after energy minimization processes indicate that the atoms in shell Ag are reconstructed when the shell thicknesses smaller than 1.0 nm, while the shell thickness increases from 1.0 nm to 1.5 nm, the shape of NWs change into irregular circle. And then the tension strain is performed along the [0 0 1] direction under the conditions of varying the shell thickness and the temperature, respectively. It is found that, in low temperature region