Stable single atomic silver wires assembling into a circuitry-connectable nanoarray.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33608540.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-21462-3 and PMC identifier 7895918.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Atomic metal wires have great promise for practical applications in devices due to their unique electronic properties. Unfortunately, such atomic wires are extremely unstable. Here we fabricate stable atomic silver wires (ASWs) with appreciably unoccupied states inside the parallel tunnels of α-MnO<sub>2</sub> nanorods. These unoccupied Ag 4d orbitals strengthen the Ag-Ag bonds, greatly enhancing the stability of ASWs while the presence of delocalized 5s electrons makes the ASWs conducting. These stable ASWs form a coherently oriented three-dimensional wire array of over 10 nm in width and up to 1 μm in length allowing us to connect it to nano-electrodes. Current-voltage characteristics of ASWs show a temperature-dependent insulator-to-metal transition, suggesting that the atomic wires could be used as thermal electrical devices.