From our results in the simulation, the predicted effects on the surface of nanoparticles from our model was accurate. For shallow grooves, the surface healed itself through diffusion. For deeper grooves necking occurred. For even deeper grooves voids formed and broke away from the rest of the surface. For very deep grooves multiple necks formed which would lead to multiple voids forming as time went on.
One major problem we encountered while simulating the results with MATLAB was that the computer could not handle time ranges over 10 seconds, for it did not have enough memory to construct the movie if we let the simulation run longer than that. Another issue that arose was that multiple voids sometimes formed off of each other leading to program instabilities as we were unable to modify our program to fully deal with the possibility of multiple voids being formed off of other voids due to time constraints. Future groups that seek to continue work in this area may consider tackling the problem of a very long groove generating multiple voids which may then coalesce back into each other.
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