Conductance of Atomic-Sized Lead Contacts in an Electrochemical Environment
arXiv:1002.4291 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.82.075417
Abstract
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 conductance histograms with sharply resolved, individual peaks. Charge transport calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) for various ideal Pb contact geometries are in good agreement with the experimental results. Depending on the atomic configuration, single-atom-wide contacts of one and the same metal yield very different conductance values.
arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures
References in corpus (6)
- Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors
- Measurement of the conductance of a hydrogen molecule
- Electron-vibration interaction in single-molecule junctions: from contact to tunneling regime
- Conductance fluctuations as a tool for investigating the quantum modes in atomic size metallic contacts
- Theoretical analysis of the conductance histograms and structural properties of Ag, Pt and Ni nanocontacts
- Cluster-based density-functional approach to quantum transport through molecular and atomic contacts