Force, charge, and conductance of an ideal metallic nanowire

Details Force, charge, and conductance of an ideal metallic nanowire Force, charge, and conductance of an ideal metallic nanowire

1998-09-23

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9809318v1

Phys. Rev. B 59, 7560 (1999)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

23 pages, 8 figures

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevB.59.7560

The conducting and mechanical properties of a metallic nanowire formed at the junction between two macroscopic metallic electrodes are investigated. Both two- and three-dimensional wires with a W(ide)-N(arrow)-W(ide) geometry are modelled in the free-electron approximation with hard-wall boundary conditions. Tunneling and quantum-size effects are treated exactly using the scattering matrix formalism. Oscillations of order E_F/lambda_F in the tensile force are found when the wire is stretched to the breaking point, which are synchronized with quantized jumps in the conductance. The force and conductance are shown to be essentially independent of the width of the wide sections (electrodes). The exact results are compared with an adiabatic approximation; the later is found to overestimate the effects of tunneling, but still gives qualitatively reasonable results for nanowires of length L>>lambda_F, even for this abrupt geometry. In addition to the force and conductance, the net charge of the nanowire is calculated and the effects of screening are included within linear response theory. Mesoscopic charge fluctuations of order e are predicted which are strongly correlated with the mesoscopic force fluctuations. The local density of states at the Fermi energy exhibits nontrivial behavior which is correlated with fine structure in the force and conductance, showing the importance of treating the whole wire as a mesoscopic system rather than treating only the narrow part.

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