Jellium model of metallic nanocohesion

TL;DR

This paper presents a jellium model that unifies the understanding of metallic nanostructures' cohesion and conductance, predicting force oscillations and conductance quantization during stretching.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified jellium approximation linking conductance channels to chemical bonds and predicts universal force oscillations in metallic nanowires.

Findings

Force oscillations of order epsilon_F/lambda_F predicted during wire stretching

Quantized conductance jumps synchronized with force oscillations

Unified model of cohesion and conductance in metallic nanostructures

Abstract

A unified treatment of the cohesive and conducting properties of metallic nanostructures in terms of the electronic scattering matrix is developed. A simple picture of metallic nanocohesion in which conductance channels act as delocalized chemical bonds is derived in the jellium approximation. Universal force oscillations of order epsilon_F/lambda_F are predicted when a metallic quantum wire is stretched to the breaking point, which are synchronized with quantized jumps in the conductance.