Related papers: Transition from tunneling to direct contact in tun…
The transition from tunneling to metallic contact between two surfaces does not always involve a jump, but can be smooth. We have observed that the configuration and material composition of the electrodes before contact largely determines…
The evolution of electron conductance in the presence of inelastic effects is studied as an atomic gold contact is formed evolving from a low-conductance regime (tunneling) to a high-conductance regime (contact). In order to characterize…
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…
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 conductance of C60 on Cu(100) is investigated with a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope. At the transition from tunneling to the contact regime the conductance of C60 adsorbed with a pentagon-hexagon bond rises rapidly to…
We study the low-energy electronic properties of a junction made of two crossed metallic carbon nanotubes of general chiralities. We derive a tight binding tunneling matrix element that couples low-energy states on the two tubes, which…
We present a theoretical study of the electronic transport through Pt nanocontacts. We show that the analysis of the tunnelling regime requires a very careful treatment of the technical details. For instance, an insufficient size of the…
At low temperatures, the transport through a superconducting-normal tunnel interface is due to tunneling of electrons in pairs. The probability for this process is shown to depend on the layout of the electrodes near the tunnel junction,…
We study the interaction between single apex atoms in a metallic contact, using the break junction geometry. By carefully 'training' our samples, we create stable junctions in which no further atomic reorganization takes place. This allows…
The transmission of the electron across the single normal metal-graphene (NG) and normal-metal-graphene-normal-metal (NGN) junctions has been investigated. For the single NG junction, the profile of the maximum transmission which has been…
We investigate the phenomenon of reflectionless tunneling in ballistic normal-metal--superconductor (NS) structures, using a semiclassical formalism. It is shown that applied magnetic field and superconducting phase difference both impair…
We propose a phenomenological description of electronic transport through a normal metal/superconductor interface of arbitrary transparency, which accounts for the presence of electron-electron interaction in the normal metal. The effect of…
The point contact of a tunnel tip approaching towards Ag(111) and Cu(111) surfaces is investigated with a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. A sharp jump-to-contact, random in nature, is observed in the conductance. After point…
The interplay between the electron transport in metal/ferroelectric/metal junctions with ultrathin ferroelectric barriers and the polarization state of a barrier is investigated. Using a model which takes into account screening of…
Effects of the electron-electron interaction on tunneling into a metal in ultra-high magnetic field (ultra-quantum limit) are studied. The range of the interaction is found to have a decisive effect both on the nature of the field-induced…
Many phenomena in condensed matter are thought to result from competition between different ordered phases. Palladium is a paramagnetic metal close to both ferromagnetism and superconductivity, and is therefore a potentially interesting…
We study the conductance of a junction between the normal and superconducting segments of a nanowire, both of which are subjected to spin-orbit coupling and an external magnetic field. We directly compare the transport properties of the…
We study the relationship between the differential conductance and the local density of states in tight-binding tunnel junctions where the junction' geometry can be varied between the point-contact and the planar-contact limits. The…
Transport through quantum coherent conductors, like atomic junctions, is described by the distribution of conduction channels. Information about the number of channels and their transmission can be extracted from various sources, such as…
In bulk semiconductor materials, the insulator-metal transition (IMT) is governed by the concentration of conduction electrons. Meanwhile, even when fabricated from metallic building blocks, nanocrystal films are often insulating with…