Oxygen enhanced atomic chain formation

TL;DR

This paper provides experimental evidence that oxygen incorporation significantly enhances atomic chain formation in gold and silver contacts, revealing new insights into conductance behavior and surface reconstruction effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates oxygen's role in promoting atomic chain formation in silver, previously known only for gold, and links this to surface reconstruction phenomena.

Findings

Oxygen enhances atomic chain formation in silver and gold.

Silver chains with oxygen are as long as gold chains.

Conductance decreases to about 0.1 quantum with chain length.

Abstract

We report experimental evidence for atomic chain formation during stretching of atomic-sized contacts for gold and silver, that is strongly enhanced due to oxygen incorporation. While gold has been known for its tendency to form atomic chains, for silver this is only observed in the presence of oxygen. With oxygen the silver chains are as long as those for gold, but the conductance drops with chain length to about 0.1 conductance quantum. A relation is suggested with previous work on surface reconstructions for silver (110) surfaces after chemisorption of oxygen.