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Conductance histograms are a valuable tool to study the intrinsic conductionproperties of metallic atomic-sized contacts. These histograms show a peakstructure, which is characteristic of the type of metal under investigation.Despite the enormous progress in the understanding of the electronic transportin metallic nanowires, the origin of this peak structure is still a basic openproblem. In the present work we tackle this issue, extending our theoreticalanalysis of Au conductance histograms [Dreher et al., PRB 72, 075435 (2005)] todifferent types of metals, namely, Ag, Pt and ferromagnetic Ni. We combineclassical molecular dynamics simulations of the breaking of nanocontacts withconductance calculations based on a tight-binding model. This combination givesus access to crucial information such as contact geometries, strain forces,minimum cross-sections, the conductance, transmissions of the individualconduction channels and, in the case of Ni, the spin polarization of thecurrent. We shall also briefly discuss investigations of Al atomic-sizedcontacts. From our analysis we conclude that the differences in the histogramsof these metals are due to (i) the very different electronic structures, whichmeans different atomic orbitals contributing to the transport, and (ii) thedifferent mechanical properties, which in a case like Pt lead to the formationof special structures, namely monoatomic chains. Of particular interest areresults for Ni that indicate the absence of any conductance quantization, andshow how the current polarization evolves (including large fluctuations) fromnegative values in thick contacts to even positive values in the tunnelingregime after rupture of the contact. Finally, we also present a detailedanalysis of the breaking forces of these metallic contacts.Comment: 22 pages, 19 figure

Theoretical analysis of the conductance histograms and structural properties of Ag, Pt, and Ni nanocontacts