Chen Yaxin, Tang Daiming, Huang Zhiwei, Liu Xi, Chen Jun, Sekiguchi Takashi, Qu Weiye, Chen Junxiao, Xu Dongrun, Bando Yoshio, Hu Xiaolei, Wang Xiaoping, Golberg Dmitri, Tang Xingfu
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
World Premier International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Nat Commun. 2021 Feb 19;12(1):1191. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21462-3.
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 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.
由于其独特的电子特性，原子金属线在器件的实际应用中具有巨大潜力。不幸的是，这种原子线极其不稳定。在此，我们在α-MnO纳米棒的平行隧道内制造出具有明显未占据态的稳定原子银线（ASW）。这些未占据的Ag 4d轨道强化了Ag-Ag键，极大地增强了ASW的稳定性，而离域5s电子的存在使ASW具有导电性。这些稳定的ASW形成了一个宽度超过10纳米、长度可达1微米的相干取向三维线阵列，使我们能够将其连接到纳米电极。ASW的电流-电压特性显示出温度依赖的绝缘体-金属转变，这表明原子线可被用作热电器件。
