Project 4: Quantification of the Electrical Conductance of an Atomic Junction

Overview

Developers

Jean Cviklinski, Jean-François Roch and Hugues Pothier

This project, as well as a public demonstration version of the experiment, received financial support from Labex PALM and scientific support from the Quantronique group at CEA Saclay.

When a metal wire is thinned, its electrical conductance first decreases continuously. Then, for very small diameters, it drops in steps of constant amplitude, revealing the quantum nature of electrical transport at this scale. This quantization becomes apparent when the wire’s cross-section consists of only a few atoms. As the wire is thinned further, electrical contact occurs through a single atom, and beyond that point, this atomic junction breaks.