Pulling gold nanowires with a hydrogen clamp

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates how hydrogen molecules interact with gold nanowires, revealing that hydrogen can be incorporated into the contact and enable pulling gold atom chains, albeit with reduced conductance.

Contribution

It provides new experimental evidence of hydrogen's role in gold nanowire manipulation and supports theoretical predictions of hydrogen-assisted welding.

Findings

Hydrogen molecules can be incorporated into gold nanocontacts.

Hydrogen enables pulling gold atom chains in a hydrogen environment.

Conductance of gold chains is reduced in the presence of hydrogen.

Abstract

In this paper an experimental study of the interaction of hydrogen molecules with gold nanowires is presented. Our results show, that chains of Au atoms can also be pulled in hydrogen environment, however in this case the conductance of the chain is strongly reduced compared to the perfect transmission of pure Au chains. The comparison of our experiments with recent theoretical prediction for the hydrogen welding of Au nanowires implies that a hydrogen molecule can even be incorporated in the gold nanocontact, and this hydrogen clamp is strong enough to pull a chain of gold atoms.