We describe a technique for connecting a nanometer-scale gold grain to leads by atomic-scale gold point contacts. These devices differ from previous metallic quantum dots in that the conducting channels are relatively well-transmitting. We investigate the dependence of the Coulomb blockade on contact resistance. The high-resistance devices display Coulomb blockade and the low-resistance devices display a zero-bias conductance dip, both in quantitative agreement with theory. We find that in the intermediate regime, where the sample resistance is close to h/e2, the I-V curve displays a Coulomb staircase with symmetric contact capacitances.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0210620,
title = {Nanometer-Scale Metallic Grains Connected with Atomic-Scale Conductors},
author = {A. Anaya and A. L. Korotkov and M. Bowman and J. Waddell and D. Davidovic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0210620},
year = {2009}
}