Elongation of Atomic-size Wires: Atomistic Aspects and Quantum Conductance Studies

The study of atomic-size metal nanowires (NW’s) is attracting a great interest due to occurrence a novel physical and chemical phenomena. Among these new phenomena, we can mention conductance quantization that will certainly influence the design of nanodevices. NW’s are usually generated by mechanical deformation and the conductance is measured during the wire elongation. The interpretation of the results is troublesome, because conductance is …