Role of heating and current-induced forces in the stability of atomic wires

Abstract

We investigate the role of local heating and forces on ions in the stability of current-carrying aluminum wires. We find that heating increases with wire length due to a red shift of the frequency spectrum. Nevertheless, the local temperature of the wire is relatively low for a wide range of biases provided good thermal contact exists between the wire and the bulk electrodes. On the contrary, current-induced forces increase substantially as a function of bias and reach bond-breaking values at about 1 V. These results suggest that local heating promotes low-bias instabilities if dissipation into the bulk electrodes is not efficient, while current-induced forces are mainly responsible for the wire break-up at large biases. We compare these results to experimental observations.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors
• Formation and manipulation of a metallic wire of single gold atoms
• Observation of a parity oscillation in the conductance of atomic wires
• Theory of local heating in nanoscale conductors
• High-bias stability of monatomic chains
• Inelastic current-voltage characteristics of atomic and molecular junctions
• Four-atom period in the conductance of monatomic Al wires
• First-principles Simulations of the stretching and final breaking of Al nanowires: Mechanical properties and electrical conductance
• Are current-induced forces conservative?
• Thermal Transport through a Mesoscopic Weak Link
• Shot Noise in Nanoscale Conductors From First Principles
• Connective neck evolution and conductance steps in hot point contacts
• Nonlinear current-induced forces in Si atomic wires

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Molecular Transport Junctions: Vibrational Effects
• Ab initio analysis of electron-phonon coupling in molecular devices
• Inelastic effects on the transport properties of alkanethiols
• Coupled electron and phonon transport in one-dimensional atomic junctions
• Efficiency of Energy Conversion in Thermoelectric Nanojunctions
• The transfer of energy between electrons and ions in solids
• Microscopic Current Dynamics in Nanoscale Junctions
• Effect of electron-phonon scattering on shot noise in nanoscale junctions
• Local Temperatures Out of Equilibrium
• Seebeck Coefficients in Nanoscale Junctions: Effects of Electron-vibration Scattering and Local Heating
• Current-induced energy barrier suppression for electromigration from first principles
• Effect of Thermoelectric Cooling in Nanoscale Junctions
• The influence of vibronic coupling on the shape of transport characteristics in inelastic tunneling through molecules
• Local electron and ionic heating effects on the conductance of nanostructures
• Effects of Isotope Substitution on Local Heating and Inelastic current in Hydrogen Molecular Junctions
• Generalized Voigt broadening due to thermal fluctuations of electromechanical nanosensors and molecular electronic junctions
• Decoherence in elastic and polaronic transport via discrete quantum states
• Current-Induced Effects in Nanoscale Conductors