Educational models of plasmonic metal nanoparticles (Gold and Silver)
Description
These are educational models of crystalline metal nanoparticles of 1 - 8 nm in size (clusters of ~500-9000 atoms) in "flavors" Gold (Au) and Silver (Ag). They can be used to explain how surface energy of different crystallographic facets determine the eventual shape of nanostructures. They are also useful for explaining heterogeneous catalysis and variation of activation energy between surface and edges. They're also pretty cool as ornaments. You can use the instructions below to create nanoparticles of any other size or made from different materials! Specifically, these are created through the Wulff construction algorithm in the Python-based Atomic Simulation Environment (https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/ase/about.html), which is a method to create surface-energy minimized nanoparticles. In other words, these nanoparticles are the thermodynamically most favorable state. After construction and energy minimization, the clusters were exported as atomic coordinates and imported in Blender (Atomic Blender plugin) for post-processing. The python script is included here! To simplify the nanoparticles (and reduce printing time), in Blender I added two structures together: a "filler" core and the atomic shell (both individually exported by the python script). The core consists of all atoms (imported as metaballs and downscaled to ~80%), and the shell consists of only the exterior atoms (imported as mesh). You can choose between printing the full nanoparticles and the "halved" nanoparticles. Whereas the full particles will require support structures, the halved particles do not and can be easily glued together by using the "aiming holes" and nails or screws to connect them. In my case I printed all structures at 150% and used 2 mm nails and screws to connect them (after snipping off the nails' heads). The first picture shows a collection of "Ag_Wulff_n=2309_halved.stl". The second picture shows all silver (Ag) nanoparticles in increasing size. The third picture shows all gold (Au) nanoparticles in increasing size. All models were printed in PLA at 150% with a 0.4 mm nozzle and 0.2 mm line spacing.
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