Formation of atomic‐sized contacts controlled by electrochemical methods

The present special issue of physica status solidi (a) contains contributions from the TNT2006 – Trends in Nanotechnology Conference, held in Grenoble, France, 4–8 September 2006. Editor's Choice is the article by Reyes Calvo et al. [1], which reports on the possibilities of using electrochemical methods to form atomic‐sized contacts. In particular, the authors analyze previous attempts and propose improvements on several methods, in order to increase the control and the ease of preparation of the nanocontacts. The cover picture shows the electrochemical cell (1 cm in diameter) used for the experiments (left) with a schematic of the electronic circuit used. An artistic view of the atomic contact is depicted at the top. The lower right panel shows the last stages of the evolution of the conductance of a gold wire while being electrochemically etched. The last plateau of conductance corresponds to a one‐atom contact. The upper right panel shows the voltamogram of the wire prior to etching. This work was done mainly at the Low Temperatures & Nanotechnology Laboratory of the University of Alicante (Spain), lead by Dr. Carlos Untiedt. He is a “Ramon y Cajal” Researcher whose main research interest is the electronic transport in nanostructures, and in particular in atomic‐sized contacts. The issue also contains an Original Paper on scientific policy entitled “Nanotechnology applications: a driving force for R&D investment” [2], and a Feature Article presenting a report on the synthesis of luminescent silicon nanostructures by means of laser ablation techniques by Riabinia et al. [3]. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)