Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-2/section-b/19/i/solution

Three suitable examples are cubes bounded mainly by facets, octahedra bounded by facets, and truncated octahedra bounded by both and facets. These are crystallographically distinct shapes rather than three arbitrary rounded particle outlines.
At fixed volume the thermodynamic equilibrium shape minimizes , with an edge/corner correction when particles are very small. In the Wulff construction, facet support-plane distances scale as their interfacial free energies. Silver's clean low-index energies, selective adsorption of ligands or ions, solvent chemical potential and possible support contact alter those energies. Crystal twinning and elastic strain can add further costs or stabilize multiply twinned forms. A face with slow attachment kinetics can also survive during growth even when that morphology is not the thermodynamic equilibrium Wulff shape. Homogeneous nucleation describes where nuclei form; it does not guarantee an thermodynamic equilibrium final shape.

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