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After making a cold weld by pressing two clean metal surfaces together, upon gradually separating the two pieces a metallic nanowire is formed, which progressively thins down to a single atom before contact is lost. In previous experiments…
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…
Nanofluidic systems exhibit transport characteristics that have made technological marvels such as desalination, energy harvesting, and highly sensitive biomolecule sensing possible by virtue of their ability to influence small currents due…
Understanding the mechanical properties of nanoscale systems requires a range of measurement techniques and theoretical approaches to gather the relevant physical and chemical information. The arrangements of atoms in nanostructures and…
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) supplemented with a force sensor is used to study the mechanical properties of a novel metallic nanostructure: a freely suspended chain of single gold atoms. We find that the bond strength of the…
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…
A remarkably quantitative understanding of the electrical and mechanical properties of metal wires with a thickness on the scale of a nanometer has been obtained within the free-electron model using semiclassical techniques. Convergent…
The quantum size oscillations of the energetic properties and the elongation force of the gold slabs and wires, isolated and in a contact with electrodes, are calculated in a free-electron model. A simple relation between the Fermi energy…
The conducting and mechanical properties of a metallic nanowire formed at the junction between two macroscopic metallic electrodes are investigated. Both two- and three-dimensional wires with a W(ide)-N(arrow)-W(ide) geometry are modelled…
When two metal electrodes are separated, a nanometer sized wire (nanowire) is formed just before the contact breaks. The electrical conduction measured during this retraction process shows signs of quantized conductance in units of…
This study presents a simulation approach for three-dimensional nanotube networks using cubic and tetragonal unit cells to enhance modeling efficiency. A random-walk algorithm was developed to generate these networks, which were analyzed in…
A general linear stability analysis of simple metal nanowires is presented using a continuum approach which correctly accounts for material-specific surface properties and electronic quantum-size effects. The competition between surface…
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…
Nanowires have been considered for a number of applications in nanometrology. In such a context, we have explored the possibility of using ultrathin twisted nanowires as torsion nanobalances to probe forces and torques at molecular level…
Starting from a particle system with short-range interactions, we derive a continuum model for the bending, torsion, and brittle fracture of inextensible rods moving in three-dimensional space. As the number of particles tends to infinity,…
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…
Density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations have been used to optimize the structure of nanowires of SiO2. The starting structures were based on b-cristobalite, orthotridymite, b-tridymite, and rutile crystals. The analysis…
The electronic and vibrational properties and electron-phonon couplings of one-dimensional materials will be key to many prospective applications in nanotechnology. Dimensionality strongly affects these properties and has to be correctly…
We study contact effects on electron transport across a molecular wire sandwiched between two semi-infinite (carbon) nanotube leads as a model for nanoelectrodes. Employing the Landauer scattering matrix approach we find that the…
Segmented magnetic nanowires are a promising route for the development of three dimensional data storage techniques. Such devices require a control of the coercive field and the coupling mechanisms between individual magnetic elements. In…