PMID- 18788809
OWN - NLM
STAT- PubMed-not-MEDLINE
DCOM- 20081222
LR  - 20090121
IS  - 1520-5126 (Electronic)
IS  - 0002-7863 (Linking)
VI  - 130
IP  - 40
DP  - 2008 Oct 8
TI  - Extending the capability of STM break junction for conductance measurement of 
      atomic-size nanowires: an electrochemical strategy.
PG  - 13228-30
LID - 10.1021/ja8055276 [doi]
AB  - The STM break junction (STM-BJ) and mechanically controllable break junction 
      (MCBJ) are the two most widely applied techniques to fabricate atomic-size 
      nanowires for conductance measurement. However, the drawbacks of the mechanical 
      crashing between the two electrodes of the same material in these techniques 
      hamper its capability of application in view of the variety of metals as well as 
      the environment to perform the measurements. In this paper, we present an 
      electrochemical strategy for STM-BJ by establishing a chemically well-defined 
      metallic contact through a jump-to-contact mechanism between the tip and 
      substrate of dissimilar metals, wherein the tip is in situ and electrochemically 
      deposited with a thin film of a foreign metal of interest. The feasibility of the 
      approach is demonstrated by taking Cu as a model system, followed by generalizing 
      to Pd and Fe for which the conductance has been found otherwise difficult to 
      measure at room temperature. The preferential point-contact conductance at 1, 
      0.9, and 0.86 G0 was measured for Cu, Pd, and Fe, respectively. The strategy 
      present in this work not only extends the capability of STM-BJ to create a 
      variety of metal nanowires including magnetic nanowires for further 
      investigations but also provides opportunities to construct metal-molecule-metal 
      junctions with a variety of choices of metals in the junctions.
FAU - Zhou, Xiao-Shun
AU  - Zhou XS
AD  - State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces and Department of 
      Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 
      Xiamen 361005, China.
FAU - Wei, Yi-Min
AU  - Wei YM
FAU - Liu, Ling
AU  - Liu L
FAU - Chen, Zhao-Bin
AU  - Chen ZB
FAU - Tang, Jing
AU  - Tang J
FAU - Mao, Bing-Wei
AU  - Mao BW
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20080913
PL  - United States
TA  - J Am Chem Soc
JT  - Journal of the American Chemical Society
JID - 7503056
EDAT- 2008/09/16 09:00
MHDA- 2008/09/16 09:01
CRDT- 2008/09/16 09:00
PHST- 2008/09/16 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2008/09/16 09:01 [medline]
PHST- 2008/09/16 09:00 [entrez]
AID - 10.1021/ja8055276 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - J Am Chem Soc. 2008 Oct 8;130(40):13228-30. doi: 10.1021/ja8055276. Epub 2008 Sep 
      13.