Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Sintering and Surface Premelting of Silver Nanoparticles

Sintering of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) is increasingly being used as a driving mechanism for joining in the microelectronics industry. We therefore performed molecular dynamics simulations based on the embedded atom method (EAM) to study pressureless sintering kinetics of two Ag NPs in the size range of (4 to 20 nm), and sintering of three and four Ag NPs of 4 nm diameter. We found that the sintering process passed through three main stages. The …