Scaling of the conductance in gold nanotubes

Abstract

A new form of gold nanobridges has been recently observed in ultrahigh-vacuum experiments, where gold atoms rearrange to build helical nanotubes, akin in some respects to carbon nanotubes. The good reproducibility of these wires and their unexpected stability allow for conductance measurements and make them promising candidates for future applications. We present here a study of the transport properties of these nanotubes in order to understand the role of chirality and of the different orbitals in quantum transport observables. The conductance per atomic row shows a light decreasing trend as the diameter grows, which is also shown through an analytical formula based on a one-orbital model.

Chiral currents in gold nanotubes

“…In addition to widely-studied carbon nanotubes [7], chiral nanotubes have been formed from a range of other materials, including gold [5,8,9], platinum [10], silver [11], alkaline metals [12][13][14] and boron nitride [15,16]. These experimental observations have been supported by a range of theoretical investigations [17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…In addition to widely-studied carbon nanotubes [7], chiral nanotubes have been formed from a range of other materials, including gold [5,8,9], platinum [10], silver [11], alkaline metals [12][13][14] and boron nitride [15,16]. These experimental observations have been supported by a range of theoretical investigations [17][18][19][20][21][22].It has recently been noted that the presence of intrinsic chiral electron currents in chiral nanotubes can be exploited to yield photogalvanic effects in heteropolar nanotubes [17], a new drive mechanism in carbon-nanotube windmills [23] and to produce internal magnetic fields in carbon nanotube solenoids [24] . In each of these examples, the underlying lattice is hexagonal, with two atoms per unit cell.…”

Vibrational properties of single-walled silver nanotubes studied from first principles

“…Another ab initio density functional theory calculations give further evidence that the hollow (4,4) SWSNT is structurally intrinsic and not caused by the contamination of light atoms (H, C, N and O) [7]. The experimental observations of the single-walled gold and silver tubes have also stimulated greatly the researcher's interests in them, both experimentally and theoretically, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] due to their unique physical and chemical properties, and also potential applications in future nanoelectronics and nano-optics, hydrogen storage, catalysis.…”

Charge transport behavior of 1D gold chiral nanojunctions

“…Our f irst − principles quantum transport analysis further suggests that chiral Au(7,3)NWs render higher electronic conductance than chiral gold (5,3) nanotubes (NTs), once bridged by either σ-saturated or π-conjugated molecular moieties. It, however, turns out that asymmetricity in the characteristics of channel formation at the lead-molecule contact remains often associated with chiral Au(7,3)NWs only.Recent years have seen a sizeable amount of study on one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures in the form of nanotubes (NTs) and nanowires (NWs), primarily because of their potential applications in nanodevice technology [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Among these, chiral nanostructures continue to garner interest due especially to their characteristic helicity that often displays the ability to control the physical properties in somewhat more flexible way.…”