Conductance measurements on atomic-sized contacts of gold using a low-cost mechanically controllable break junction equipment

The mechanically controllable break junction (MCBJ) experimental setup is one of the main techniques employed in the study of electronic transport properties at the nano-scale. This work presents the construction of an innovative, robust, low-cost, and simple equipment that shows the emergence of conductance quantization as a macroscopic gold wire is pulled up to atomic dimensions. The handmade equipment is based on the MCBJ principle and allows forming and breaking a metallic contact continuously to perform a statistical analysis of the data. The histogram built from conductance measurements at room temperature in air, shows that the quality of the built MCBJ equipment is comparable to that of a similar equipment used in research laboratories. It is able to resolve up to the third peak that characterizes the conductance histogram of gold nanowires reported in the literature. Such an experiment is suggested to be implemented as a powerful pedagogical tool in lectures of contemporary physics.

• 主要作者: Borja Espinosa, Carla Nataly (author)
• 格式: bachelorThesis
• 語言: eng
• 出版: 2020
• 主題: Cuantización de la conductancia; Contacto de oro de tamaño atómico; Unión de ruptura controlable mecánicamente; Microscopio de efecto túnel; Conductance quantization; Atomic-sized gold contact; Mechanically controllable break junction; Scanning tunneling microscope
• 在線閱讀: http://repositorio.yachaytech.edu.ec/handle/123456789/136