相关论文: Stability and Symmetry Breaking in Metal Nanowires

This article presents a brief review of the nanoscale free-electron model, which provides a continuum description of metal nanostructures. It is argued that surface and quantum-size effects are the two dominant factors in the energetics 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…

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 surface dynamics and thermodynamics of metal nanowires are investigated in a continuum model. Competition between surface tension and electron-shell effects leads to a rich stability diagram, with fingers of stability extending to…

We present a theoretical approach for understanding the stability of simple metal nanowires, in particular monovalent metals such as the alkalis and noble metals. Their cross sections are of order one nanometer so that small perturbations…

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…

A brief review of the nanoscale free-electron model of metal nanowires is presented. This continuum description of metal nanostructures allows for a unified treatment of cohesive and conducting properties. Conductance channels act as…

Solid cylindrical nanowires are vulnerable to a Rayleigh-Plateau-type morphological instability. The instability results in a wire breakup, followed by formation of a chain array of spherical nanoparticles. In this paper, a base model of a…

We develop a generalized grand canonical potential for the ballistic nonequilibrium electron distribution in a metal nanowire with a finite applied bias voltage. Coulomb interactions are treated in the self-consistent Hartree approximation,…

A stability analysis of metal nanowires shows that a Jahn-Teller deformation breaking cylindrical symmetry can be energetically favorable, leading to stable nanowires with elliptic cross sections. The sequence of stable cylindrical and…

Long, cylindrical metal nanowires have recently been observed to form and be stable for seconds at a time at room temperature. Their stability and structural dynamics is well described by a continuum model, the nanoscale free-electron…

A quantum-mechanical stability analysis of metallic nanowires within the free-electron model is presented. The stability is determined by an interplay of electron-shell effects, the Rayleigh instability due to surface tension, and the…

Using a recent continuum model of a single-crystal nanowire morphological evolution in the applied axial electric field, an axisymmetric evolution of a microscopically rough nanowire surface is computed. Morphological evolution results in a…

We performed an extensive first-principles study of nanowires in various pentagonal structures by using pseudopotential plane wave method within the density functional theory. Our results show that nanowires of different types of elements,…

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…

Metal nanowires exhibit a number of interesting properties: their electrical conductance is quantized, their shot-noise is suppressed by the Pauli principle, and they are remarkably strong and stable. We show that many of these properties…

Computer simulations suggest that ultrathin metal wires should develop exotic, non-crystalline stable atomic structures, once their diameter decreases below a critical size of the order of a few atomic spacings. The new structures, whose…

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…

We investigated the properties of stability and plasticity of silicon nanowires using molecular dynamics simulations. We considered nanowires with <100>, <110> and <112> growth directions with several diameters and surface facet…

We report an ab-initio investigation of several possible Si and Ge pristine nanowires with diameters between 0.5 and 1.2 nm. We considered nanowires based on the diamond structure, high-density bulk structures, and fullerene-like…