On the paradoxical relation between the melting temperature and forbidden energy gap of nanoparticles.

We comment on the paradox that seems to exist about a correlation between the size-dependent melting temperature and the forbidden energy gap of nanoparticles. By analyzing the reported expressions for the melting temperature and the band gap of nanoparticles, we conclude that there exists a relation between these two physical quantities. However, the variations of these two quantities with size for semiconductors are different from that of metals.