Letter abstract
Nature Materials 7, 539 - 542 (2008)
Published online: 15 June 2008 | doi:10.1038/nmat2209
Subject Categories: Electronic materials | Nanoscale materials
Charge-order fluctuations in one-dimensional silicides
Changgan Zeng1,2, P. R. C. Kent3, Tae-Hwan Kim3, An-Ping Li3 & Hanno H. Weitering1,4
Metallic nanowires are of great interest as interconnects in nanoelectronic devices1. They also represent important systems for understanding the complexity of electronic interactions and conductivity in one dimension2. We have fabricated exceptionally long and uniform YSi2 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 chain3, exhibiting van Hove type singularities in the one-dimensional density of states and charge-order fluctuations below 150 K. 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.
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1200, USA
- Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
- Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
- Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
Correspondence to: Hanno H. Weitering1,4 e-mail: hanno@utk.edu
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