Mechanical annealing of metallic electrodes at the atomic scale

Abstract

The process of creating an atomically defined and robust metallic tip is described and quantified using measurements of contact conductance between gold electrodes and numerical simulations. Our experiments show how the same conductance behavior can be obtained for hundreds of cycles of formation and rupture of the nanocontact by limiting the indentation depth between the two electrodes up to a conductance value of approximately $5G_0$ in the case of gold. This phenomenon is rationalized using molecular dynamics simulations together with density functional theory transport calculations which show how, after repeated indentations (mechanical annealing), the two metallic electrodes are shaped into tips of reproducible structure. These results provide a crucial insight into fundamental aspects relevant to nano-tribology or scanning probe microscopies.

References in corpus (8)

• Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors
• Structure and conductance histogram of atomic-sized Au contacts
• Theoretical analysis of the conductance histograms and structural properties of Ag, Pt and Ni nanocontacts
• Fabrication and Characterization of Metallic Nanowires
• Single atom adhesion in optimized gold nanojunctions
• From favorable atomic configurations to supershell structures: a new interpretation of conductance histograms
• Ballistic resistivity in aluminum nanocontacts
• Mechanical, Electrical, and Magnetic Properties of Ni Nanocontacts

Cited by in corpus (12)

• A group-theoretic approach to the origin of chirality-induced spin selectivity in non-magnetic molecular junctions
• Understanding the structure of the first atomic contact in Gold
• Robust procedure for creating and characterizing the atomic structure of scanning tunneling microscope tips
• The role of first neighbors geometry in the electronic and mechanical properties of atomic contacts
• Modeling Single Molecule Junction Mechanics as a Probe of Interface Bonding
• Highly reproducible low temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy with in situ prepared tips
• Modeling contact formation between atomic-sized gold tips via molecular dynamics
• Analysis of the Kondo effect in ferromagnetic atomic-sized contacts
• Nanofabricated tips for device-based scanning tunneling microscopy
• Dynamic bonding influenced by the proximity of adatoms to one-atom high step edges
• Exploring Three-Atom-Thick Gold Structures as a Benchmark for Atomic-Scale Calibration of Break-Junction Systems
• Scanning Tunneling Microscopy in high vectorial magnetic fields