Related papers: Connective neck evolution and conductance steps in…
Using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we investigated the evolution of electrical conductance between a Pb tip and Pb(111) surface from tunneling to atomic point contact at a site that was defined with atomic precision. We found that…
The continuing miniaturization of microelectronics raises the prospect of nanometre-scale devices with mechanical and electrical properties that are qualitatively different from those at larger dimensions. The investigation of these…
Single atom junctions between superconducting niobium leads are produced using the Mechanically Controllable Break Junction technique. The current-voltage characteristics of these junctions are analysed using an exact formulation for a…
Atomic-sized lead (Pb) contacts are deposited and dissolved in an electrochemical environment, and their transport properties are measured. Due to the electrochemical fabrication process, we obtain mechanically unstrained contacts and…
Many experiments have shown that the conductance histograms of metallic atomic-sized contacts exhibit a peak structure, which is characteristic of the corresponding material. The origin of these peaks still remains as an open problem. In…
Electrical conductance through various nanocontacts between gold electrodes is studied by using the density functional theory, scalar-relativistic pseudopotentials, generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation energy and…
Atomic-sized junctions of iron, created by controlled rupture, present unusually high values of conductance compared to other metals. This result is counter-intuitive since, at the nanoscale, body-centered cubic metals are expected to…
Atomic quantum point contacts accommodate a small number of conduction channels. Their number N and transmission coefficients {T_n} can be determined by analyzing the subgap structure due to multiple Andreev reflections in the…
The electronic and transport properties of atomic-size contacts are analyzed theoretically using a self-consistent tight-binding model. Our results show that, for s-like metals, a sufficiently narrow contact exhibits well defined resonant…
We have measured conductance histograms of atomic point contacts made from the noble-transition metal alloys CuNi, AgPd, and AuPt for a concentration ratio of 1:1. For all alloys these histograms at low bias voltage (below 300 mV) resemble…
The conductance through a semi-infinite one-dimensional wire, partly embedded in a superconducting bulk electrode, is studied. When the electron-electron interactions within the wire are strongly repulsive, the wire effectively decouples…
The evolution of the structure and conductance of an Al nanowire subject to a tensile stress has been studied by first-principles total-energy simulations. Our calculations show the correlation between discontinuous changes in the force…
We study the evolution of conductance regimes in carbon nanotubes with doubly degenerate orbitals (``shells'') by controlling the contact transparency within the same sample. For sufficiently open contacts, Kondo behavior is observed for 1,…
The conductance through a quantum point contact created by a sharp and hard metal tip on the graphite surface has features which to our knowledge have not been encountered so far in metal contacts or in nanowires. In this paper we first…
The formation and rupture of atomic-sized contacts is modelled by means of molecular dynamics simulations. Such nano-contacts are realized in scanning tunnelling microscope and mechanically controlled break junction experiments. These…
The thermopower and conductance of atomic-size metallic contacts have been simultaneously measured using a mechanically controllable break junction. For contacts approaching atomic dimensions, abrupt steps in the thermopower are observed…
Understanding and controlling heat transport in molecular junctions would provide new routes to design nanoscale coupled electronic and phononic devices. Using first principles full quantum calculations, we tune thermal conductance of a…
Using remarkably simple experimental techniques it is possible to gently break a metallic contact and thus form conducting nanowires. During the last stages of the pulling a neck-shaped wire connects the two electrodes, the diameter of…
The superconducting proximity effect is probed experimentally in Josephson junctions fabricated with InAs nanowires contacted by Nb leads. Contact transparencies $t \sim 0.7$ are observed. The electronic phase coherence length at low…
We have performed first-principles calculations for the mechanic and electric properties of pure Pt nano-contacts and a Pt contact with a single CO molecule adsorbed. For the pure Pt contacts we see a clear difference between point contacts…