Charge Order Fluctuations in one-dimensional silicides

Abstract

Metallic nanowires are of great interest as interconnects in future nanoelectronic circuits. They also represent important systems for understanding the complexity of electronic interactions and conductivity in one-dimension. We have fabricated exceptionally long and uniform YSi2 nanowires via self-assembly of yttrium atoms on Si(001). 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 150 K. The structure of the wire was determined though a detailed comparison of scanning tunneling microscopy data and first-principles calculations. Sporadic broadenings of the wires' cross section imply the existence of a novel metal-semiconductor junction whose electronic properties are governed by the finite- size- and temperature-scaling of the charge ordering correlation.