Using remarkably simple experimental techniques it is possible to gently break a metallic
contact and thus form conducting nanowires. During the last stages of the pulling a neck …

As the scale of microelectronic engineering continues to shrink, interest has focused on the
nature of electron transport through essentially one-dimensional nanometre-scale channels …

Nanowires, point contacts and metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes are one-dimensional
nanostructures which display important size-dependent quantum effects. Quantization due …

Measuring simultaneously the force and the conductance during the formation and rupture
of an atomic-sized gold contact at room temperature, we observe that deformation occurs as …

We have used high resolution transmission electron microscopy to determine the structure of
gold nanowires generated by mechanical stretching. Just before rupture, the contacts adopt …

We have simulated the mechanical deformation of atomic-scale metallic contacts under
tensile strain using molecular dynamics and effective medium theory potentials. The …

Various Green's-function-based formalisms which express the current I as a function of
applied voltage V for an electrode–molecule–electrode assembly are compared and …

The structures of free-standing gold nanowires are studied by using molecular-dynamics-
based genetic algorithm simulations. Helical and multiwalled cylindrical structures are found …

We present an in situ and time resolved high-resolution transmission electron microscopy
study of the atomistic process during the last elongation stages of gold nanojunctions. In …

Contact and subsequent retraction between nanometer-sized gold tips were controlled at an
atomic scale using a piezoelectric device at room temperature inside a high-resolution …