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Formation of atomic‐sized contacts controlled by electrochemical methods
Author(s) -
Reyes Calvo M.,
Mares Ancuta I.,
Climent Victor,
van Ruitenbeek Jan M.,
Untiedt Carlos
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.200675319
Subject(s) - nanotechnology , nanostructure , materials science , fabrication , nanoscopic scale , electrochemistry , electrode , break junction , nanowire , dissolution , simplicity , optoelectronics , chemistry , physics , quantum tunnelling , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , quantum mechanics
Electrochemical methods have recently become an interesting tool for fabricating and characterizing nanostructures at room temperature. Simplicity, low cost and reversibility are some of the advantages of this technique that allows to work at the nanoscale without requiring sophisticated instrumentation. In our experimental setup, we measure the conductance across a nanocontact fabricated either by dissolving a macroscopic gold wire or by depositing gold in between two separated gold electrodes. We have achieved a high level of control on the electrochemical fabrication of atomic‐sized contacts in gold. The use of electrochemistry as a reproducible technique to prepare nanocontacts will open several possibilities that are not feasible with other methodologies. It involves, also, the possibility of reproducing experiments that today are made by more expensive, complicated or irreversible methods. As example, we show here a comparison of the results when looking for shell effects in gold nanocontacts with those obtained by other techniques. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)