Vibration-Induced Property Change in the Melting and Solidifying Process of Metallic Nanoparticles

Tuning material properties in the 3-D printing process of metallic parts is a challenging task of current interests. Much research has been conducted to understand the effects of controlling parameters such as the particle geometry (size and shape), heating, and cooling ways on the outcome of the printing process. However, nothing has been done to explore the system vibration effect. This letter reports our findings on the vibration-induced property change in the melting and solidifying process of silver nanoparticles with the use of molecular dynamics simulation. We find that the increase of system vibration magnitude would increase the number fraction of disordered atoms, which in turn changes the nanostructure of solidified products. For a given system vibration magnitude, the number fraction of disordered atoms reaches the maximum around the system natural frequency so that the stiffness of solidified products becomes the minimum. Since this trend is not affected by the system size, the above findings reveal a feasible path toward the real-time tuning of material properties for advancing additive manufacturing.