Artigo Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

Self-breaking in planar few-atom Au constrictions for nanometer-spaced electrodes

2007; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 90; Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.2716989

ISSN

1520-8842

Autores

Kevin M. O'neill, E A Osorio, Herre S. J. van der Zant,

Tópico(s)

Semiconductor materials and devices

Resumo

The authors present results on electromigrated Au nanojunctions broken near the conductance quantum of 77.5μS. At room temperature it is found that wires, initially narrowed by an actively-controlled electromigration technique down to a few conductance quanta, continue to narrow after removing the applied voltage. Separate electrodes form as mobile gold atoms continuously reconfigure the constriction. They find, from results obtained on over 300 samples, no evidence for gold cluster formation in junctions broken without an applied voltage, implying that gold clusters may be avoided by using this self-breaking technique.

Referência(s)