Related papers: On mesoscopic forces and quantized conductance in …
The controlled growth of nanowires (NWs) with dimensions comparable to the Fermi wavelengths of the charge carriers allows fundamental investigations of quantum confinement phenomena. Here, we present studies of proximity-induced…
A semiclassical approach for calculating shell effects, that has been used in atomic and plasma physics, is applied to describe the electronic supershells in metal clusters. Using the spherical jellium model we give the analytical…
Using concepts from fluid dynamics, a partial differential equation for the shape evolution of a metallic nanowire is derived from a semiclassical energy functional that includes electron-shell effects. A rich dynamics, involving movement…
The electronic structure and optical properties of metallic nanoshells are investigated using a jellium model and the Time Dependent Local Density Approximation (TDLDA). An efficient numerical implementation enables applications to…
For semimetal nanowires with diameters smaller than a few tens of nanometers, a semimetal-to-semiconductor transition is observed as the emergence of an energy band gap resulting from quantum confinement. Quantum confinement in a semimetal…
We report experiments on aluminum nanowires in ultra-high vacuum at room temperature that reveal a periodic spectrum of exceptionally stable structures. Two "magic" series of stable structures are observed: At low conductance, the formation…
Electronic structure properties of nanowires (NW) with diameters of 1.5 nm and 3 nm based on semimetallic $\alpha$-Sn are investigated by employing density functional theory and perturbative $GW$ methods. We explore the dependence of…
Strong coupling between electronic and mechanical degrees of freedom is a basic requirement for the operation of any nanoelectromechanical device. In this Review we consider such devices and in particular investigate the properties of small…
The Peierls instability in multi-channel metal nanowires is investigated. Hyperscaling relations are established for the finite-size-, temperature-, and wavevector-scaling of the electronic free energy. It is shown that the softening of…
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…
A linear stability analysis of metallic nanowires is performed in the free-electron model using quantum chaos techniques. It is found that the classical instability of a long wire under surface tension can be completely suppressed by…
The cohesion and conductance of a point contact in a two-dimensional metallic nanowire are investigated in an independent-electron model with hard-wall boundary conditions. All properties of the nanowire are related to the Green's function…
Using computer simulations, we have studied the percolation and the electrical conductance of two-dimensional, random percolating networks of curved, zero-width metallic nanowires. We mimicked the curved nanowires using circular arcs. The…
The transport properties and electron states in cylinder nanowires of Dirac and Weyl semimetals are studied paying special attention to the structure and properties of the surface Fermi arcs. The latter make the electric charge and current…
Diameter-modulated nanowires offer an important paradigm to design the magnetization response of 3D magnetic nanostructures by engineering the domain wall pinning. With the aim to understand its nature and to control the process, we analyze…
The structures of free-standing zirconium nanowires with 0.6$-$2.8 nm in diameter are systematically studied by using genetic algorithm simulations with a tight-binding many body potential. Several multi-shell growth sequences with…
As they do not rely on the presence of any crystal symmetry, Weyl nodes are robust topological features of an electronic structure that can occur at any momentum and energy. Acting as sinks and sources of Berry curvature, Weyl nodes have…
We analyze theoretically electronic transport through a core-shell nanowire in the presence of a transversal magnetic field. We calculate the conductance for a variable coupling between the nanowire and the attached leads and show how the…
Transmission electron microscopy experiments have recently observed gold metal nanocylinders to thin down in a discrete manner: A kink--a step of order of one atomic layer--nucleates at one end and then moves along the wire, leaving a…
Gold nanowires generated by mechanical stretching have been shown to adopt only three kinds of configurations where their atomic arrangements adjust such that either the [100], [111] or [110] zone axes lie parallel to the elongation…