2007/02/26 by K. O'Neill, Kevin O’Neill, E. A. Osorio +6
Energy · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0702594
accepted in Applied physics letters
arxiv created 2007/02/26 · openalex publication_date 2007/02/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present results on electromigrated Au nanojunctions broken near the conductance quantum 77.5 μS. At room temperature we find 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. We 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.