Towards unified understanding of conductance of stretched monatomic contacts

TL;DR

This paper presents a unified framework to understand how the conductance of stretched monatomic contacts varies with atomic composition, emphasizing resonance behavior, valence electrons, charge neutrality, and orbital shapes.

Contribution

It introduces a resonance-based model that explains diverse conductance behaviors in monatomic contacts under stretching, unifying previous disparate observations.

Findings

Conductance behavior depends on resonance response to stretching.

Valence electrons and orbital shapes critically influence conductance.

Charge neutrality plays a key role in conductance variations.

Abstract

When monatomic contacts are stretched, their conductance behaves in qualitatively different ways depending on their constituent atomic elements. Under a single assumption of resonance formation, we show that various conductance behavior can be understood in a unified way in terms of the response of the resonance to stretching. This analysis clarifies the crucial roles played by the number of valence electrons, charge neutrality, and orbital shapes.