Abstract
Gold nanowires are good candidates for nano-electronics devices. A previous study has shown that the beryllium-terminated BeO (0001) surface may be a useful platform for supporting gold nano-conductors, since it preserves the nano wire configuration and does not restrict its conductivity. Here, we used ab initio simulations to determine the sensitivity of potential gold nano-conductors to the presence of point defects, O2 substitutions and to an applied perpendicular electric field, as in field effect transistors. We found that the presence of the point defects causes only small changes in the atomic bond lengths of the NW, does not alter the NW configuration, but may affect the overall conductivity. Single or double voids on the same channel reduce the conductance by 28 % at most, but when the voids arrange in a way that only one channel remains for conductance, it reduces by factor of two to ≈1 G 0 (G 0 = 2e 2/h). The presence of a single O2 molecule as a substitution reduces the electron availability in the neighboring Au atoms, in most cases reducing the conductance. The perpendicular electric field, which is typical for field effect transistors, affects the electron density distribution, shifts and changes the conductance spectra profile, but does not decrease the conductivity.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Commercial software is identified to specify procedures. Such identification does not imply recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
References
Leong M, Doris B, Kedzierski J, Rim K, Yang M (2004) Silicon device scaling to the sub-10-nm regime. Science 306:2057–2060
Schulz M (1999) The end of the road for silicon? Nature 399:729–730
Lundstrom M (2003) Moore’s law forever? Science 299:210–211
Tavazza F, Levine LE, Chaka AM (2011) Simulation approaches for studying the conductance behavior of gold nanowires during tensile deformation. Model Simul Mater Sci Eng 19:074001
Tavazza F, Levine LE, Chaka AM (2010) Structural changes during the formation of gold single-atom chains: stability criteria and electronic structure. Phys Rev B 81:235424
Oshima Y, Kurui Y, Takayanagi K (2010) One-by-one introduction of single lattice planes in a bottlenecked gold contact during stretching. J Phys Soc Jpn 79:054702
Yanson IK, Shklyarevskii OI, Csonka S, van Kempen H, Speller S, Yanso AI, van Ruitenbeek JM (2005) Atomic-size oscillations in conductance histograms for gold nanowires and the influence of work hardening. Phys Rev Lett 95:256806
Kiguchi M, Konishi T, Murakoshi K (2006) Conductance bistability of gold nanowires at room temperature. Phys Rev B 73:125406
Scheer E et al (1998) The signature of chemical valence in the electrical conduction through a single-atom contact. Nature 394:154–157
Suzuki R, Tsutsui M, Miura D, Kurokawa S, Sakai A (2007) Distribution of 1G0 plateau length of Au contacts at room temperature. Jpn J Appl Phys 46:3694
Kizuka T (2008) Atomic configuration and mechanical and electrical properties of stable gold wires of single-atom width. Phys Rev B 77:155401
Kurui Y, Oshima Y, Okamoto M, Takayanagi K (2009) Conductance quantization and dequantization in gold nanowires due to multiple reflection at the interface. Phys Rev B 79:165414
Ohnishi H, Kondo Y, Takayanagi K (1998) Quantized conductance through individual rows of suspended gold atoms. Nature 395:780–783
Smit RHM, Untiedt C, Rubio-Bollinger G, Segers RC, van Ruitenbeek JM (2003) Observation of a parity oscillation in the conductance of atomic wires. Phys Rev Lett 91:076805
Dreher M, Pauly F, Heurich J, Cuevas JC, Scheer E, Nielaba P (2005) Structure and conductance histogram of atomic-sized Au contacts. Phys Rev B 72:75435
Agraıt N, Yeyati AL, van Ruitenbeek JM (2003) Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors. Phys Rep 377:81–279
Barzilai S, Tavazza F, Levine LE (2013) The effect of internal impurities on the mechanical and conductance properties of gold nanowires during elongation. Model Simul Mater Sci Eng 21:25004
Agraıt N, Rubio G, Vieira S (1995) Plastic deformation of nanometer-scale gold connective necks. Phys Rev Lett 74:3995
Rubio-Bollinger G, Joyez P, Agraıt N (2004) Metallic adhesion in atomic-size junctions. Phys Rev Lett 93:11680
Lee YJ et al (2004) Electron transport through monovalent atomic wires. Phys Rev B 69:125409
Tavazza F, Levine LE, Chaka AM (2009) Elongation and breaking mechanisms of gold nanowires under a wide range of tensile conditions. J Appl Phys 106:43522
Nitzan A, Ratner MA (2003) Electron transport in molecular wire junctions. Science 300:1384–1389
Qian Z, Li R, Hou S, Xue Z, Sanvito S (2007) An efficient nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism combined with density functional theory approach for calculating electron transport properties of molecular devices with quasi-one-dimensional electrodes. J Chem Phys 127:194710
Brandbyge M, Mozoz JL, Ordejon P, Taylor J, Stokbro K (2002) Density-functional method for nonequilibrium electron transport. Phys Rev B 65:165401
Fujimoto Y, Hirose K (2003) First-principles treatments of electron transport properties for nanoscale junctions. Phys Rev B 67:195315
Grigoriev A, Skorodumova NV, Simak SI, Wendin G, Johansson B, Ahuja R (2006) Electron transport in stretched monoatomic gold wires. Phys Rev Lett 97:236807
Ke L et al (2007) Ballistic conductance calculation of atomic-scale nanowires of Au and Co. Nanotechnology 18:095709
Zhuang M, Ernzerhof M (2004) Zero-voltage conductance of short gold nanowires. J Chem Phys 120:4921
Nilius N, Wallis TM, Persson M, Ho M (2003) Distance dependence of the interaction between single atoms: gold dimers on NiAl(110). Phys Rev Lett 90:196103
Calzolari A, Cavazzoni C, Nardelli MB (2004) Electronic and transport properties of artificial gold chains. Phys Rev Lett 93:96404
Nilius N, Wallis TM, Ho W (2002) Development of one-dimensional band structure in artificial gold chains. Science 297:1853–1856
Nilius N, Wallis TM, Ho W (2005) Tailoring electronic properties of atomic chains assembled by STM. Appl Phys A 80:951–956
Sashin VA, Bolorizadeh MA, Kheifets AS, Ford MJ (2003) Electronic band structure of beryllium oxide. J Phys 15:3567
Slack GA (1973) Nonmetallic crystals with high thermal conductivity. J Phys Chem Solids 34:321–335
Barzilai S, Tavazza F, Levine LE (2013) First-principle modeling of gold adsorption on BeO (0001). Surf Sci 609:39–43
Barzilai S, Tavazza F, Levine LE (2013) Structure stability and electronic transport of gold nanowires on a BeO (0 0 0 1) surface. Model simul mater sci eng 21:075003
Barzilai S, Tavazza F, Levine LE (2013) Sensitivity of gold nano-conductors to common contaminations: ab initio results. J Mat Sci 48:6619–6624
Delley B (1990) An all-electron numerical method for solving the local density functional for polyatomic molecules. J Chem Phys 92:508–517
Delley B (2000) From molecules to solids with the DMol3 approach. J Chem Phys 113:7756–7764
Perdew JP, Burke S, Ernzerhof M (1996) Generalized gradient approximation made simple. Phys Rev Lett 77:3865
Delley B (2002) Hardness conserving semilocal pseudopotentials. Phys Rev B 66:155125
Pulay P, Fogarasi G (1992) Geometry optimization in redundant internal coordinates. J Chem Phys 96:2856–2860
Baker J, Kessi A, Delley B (1996) The generation and use of delocalized internal coordinates in geometry optimization. J Chem Phys 5:192–212
Datta S (1995) Electron transport in mesoscopic systems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Perdew JP, Zunger A (1981) Self-interaction correction to density-functional approximations for many-electron systems. Phys Rev B 23:5048
Soler JM, Artacho E, Gale JD, Garc’ia A, Junquera J, Ordej’on P, S’anchez D (2002) The SIESTA method for ab initio order-N materials simulation. J Phys 14:2745–2779
Atomistix ToolKit version 12.08, QuantumWise A/S
Taylor J, Guo H, Wang J (2001) Ab initio modeling of quantum transport properties of molecular electronic devices. Phys Rev B 63:245407
Barzilai S, Tavazza F, Levine LE (2013) Ab initio study of the mechanical and transport properties of pure and contaminated silver nanowires. J Phys 25:325303
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
S. Barzilai—On sabbatical leave from the Nuclear Research Center NEGEV.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Barzilai, S., Tavazza, F. & Levine, L.E. Sensitivity of gold nano-conductors to voids, substitutions, and electric field: ab initio results. J Mater Sci 50, 412–419 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8600-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8600-x