A I Mares et al 2007 Nanotechnology 18 265403 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/18/26/265403
A I Mares1, D F Urban2, J Bürki3, H Grabert2, C A Stafford3 and J M van Ruitenbeek1
Show affiliationsWe report experiments on aluminium nanowires in ultra-high vacuum at room temperature that reveal a periodic spectrum of exceptionally stable structures. Two 'magic' series of stable structures are observed: at low conductance, the formation of stable nanowires is governed by electronic shell effects whereas for larger contacts atomic packing dominates. The crossover between the two regimes is found to be smooth. A detailed comparison of the experimental results to a theoretical stability analysis indicates that, while the main features of the observed electron-shell structure are similar to those of alkali and noble metals, a sequence of extremely stable wires plays a unique role in aluminium. This series appears isolated in conductance histograms and can be attributed to 'superdeformed' non-axisymmetric nanowires.
61.46.-w Structure of nanoscale materials
Issue 26 (4 July 2007)
Received 22 March 2007, in final form 14 May 2007
Published 7 June 2007
A I Mares et al 2007 Nanotechnology 18 265403
Shamik Gupta et al 2009 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42 485002
Bertrand Eynard and Nicolas Orantin 2009 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42 293001
R Johnsen et al 2009 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 192 012009
Wim J van der Zande 2009 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 192 011001
Wensheng Yan et al 2009 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 190 012164
Y H Matsuda et al 2009 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 190 012019
N Lütkenhaus and A J Shields 2009 New J. Phys. 11 045005
Sander van den Driesche et al 2009 Meas. Sci. Technol. 20 124015
Gerd Leuchs et al 2009 New J. Phys. 11 113040