Conductance Quantization and Electron Resonances in Sharp Tips and Atomic-Size Contacts

Abstract

The electronic and transport properties of atomic-size contacts are analyzed theoretically using a self-consistent tight-binding model. Our results show that, for s-like metals, a sufficiently narrow contact exhibits well defined resonant states at the Fermi energy, spatially localized in the neck region. These states are robust with respect to disorder and provide a simple explanation for the observed tendency to conductance quantization. It is also shown that these properties disappear for a sufficiently large contact area. The possible relevance of this resonant states in scanning tunneling spectroscopy using sharp tips is briefly analized.

4 pages, 3 postscript figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.B

References in corpus (1)

• Fabrication and Characterization of Metallic Nanowires

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