Analytic form of the size distribution in irreversible growth of nanoparticles.

Abstract

We study theoretically the size distributions of nanoparticles (surface islands, droplets, molecular chains, and semiconductor nanowires) which grow without decay and with arbitrary size and time-dependent growth rates. Using a special transformation of variables, the analytic Green's function is obtained in the form of a Gaussian the variance of which is determined by the size dependence of the growth rate k(s). In the case of the power-law growth rates k(s)=(a+s)^{α}, the explicit formulas for the expectation and variance are given that contain earlier results in the limiting regimes. In the case of heterogeneous nucleation in a closed system, by convoluting Green's function with the exponential nucleation rate, we find an analytic size distribution which takes into account a delay in forming the smallest dimer and shows how it affects the distribution shapes. The recently discovered sub-Poissonian narrowing of the size distribution by nucleation antibunching is also included in the treatment. We briefly consider the length distribution of vapor-liquid-solid nanowires in the context of the obtained results. Overall, simple analytic size distributions obtained here under rather general assumptions may be useful for understanding and modeling statistical properties of different growth systems.