Atomic dimer shuttling and two-level conductance fluctuations in Nb nanowires
ORAL
Abstract
We describe density-functional structural optimization and conductance calculations which were carried out to explain high-resolution conductance measurements of niobium nanowires. In particular, the observed bistability manifesting itself as telegraph noise in the measured conductance is associated with the formation of a niobium dimer between the opposing electrodes, with the dimer shuttling between symmetric, high-conductance, and asymmetric, low-conductance, configurations.
*Supported by DOE and NSF (RNB, CZ, and UL), and by NSF and GATech through NNRP (AM and ZD). Calculations were performed at the Center for Computational Materials Science at GaTech and at NERSC.
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