  We report results of a systematic study of structural, vibrational and
thermodynamical properties of 34-atom bimetallic nanoparticles from the
AgnCu34-n family using model interaction potentials as derived from the
embedded atom method and in the harmonic approximation of lattice dynamics.
Systematic trends in the bond length and dynamical properties can be explained
largely on arguments based on local coordination and elemental environment.
Thus increase in the number of silver atoms in a given neighborhood introduces
a monotonic increase in bond length while increase of the copper content does
the reverse. Moreover, based on bond lengths of the lowest coordinated (6 and
8) copper atoms with their nearest neighbors (Cu atoms), we find that the
nanoparticles divide into two groups with average bond length either close to
(~ 2.58 A) or smaller (~ 2.48 A) than that in bulk copper, accompanied by
characteristic features in their vibrational density of states. For the entire
set of nanoparticles, vibrational modes are found above the bulk bands of
copper/silver. Furthermore, a blue shift in the high frequency end with
increasing number of copper atoms in the nanoparticles is traced to a shrinkage
of bond lengths from bulk values. The vibrational densities of states at the
low frequency end of the spectrum scale linearly with frequency as for single
element nanoparticles, however, the effect is more pronounced for these
nanoalloys. The Debye temperature was found to be about one third of that of
the bulk for pure copper and silver nanoparticles with a non-linear increase
with increasing number of copper atoms in the nanoalloys.
