Charge-order fluctuations in one-dimensional silicides

Changgan Zeng, P. R.C. Kent, Tae Hwan Kim, An Ping Li, Hanno H. Weitering

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

72 Scopus citations

Abstract

Metallic nanowires are of great interest as interconnects in nanoelectronic devices. They also represent important systems for understanding the complexity of electronic interactions and conductivity in one dimension. We have fabricated exceptionally long and uniform YSi"2 nanowires through self-assembly of yttrium atoms on Si(001). The wire widths are quantized in odd multiples of the Si substrate lattice constant. The thinnest wires represent one of the closest realizations of the isolated Peierls chain, exhibiting van Hove type singularities in the one-dimensional density of states and charge-order fluctuations below 150K. The structure of the wire was determined through a detailed comparison of scanning tunnelling microscopy data and first-principles calculations. Quantized width variations along the thinnest wires produce built-in Schottky junctions, the electronic properties of which are governed by the finite size and temperature scaling of the charge-ordering correlation. This illustrates how a collective phenomenon such as charge ordering might be exploited in nanoelectronic devices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)539-542
Number of pages4
JournalNature Materials
Volume7
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2008

Funding

We thank Z.Y. Zhang and G.M. Stocks for stimulating discussions. The experimental research was sponsored by NIH Grant No. R01HG002647, NSF Grant No. DMR0606485 and by the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is sponsored by the Division of Scientific User Facilities, US Department of Energy. The computational research involved resources from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, and from the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.

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