Therefore, the electrons in the channels suffer from electron scattering, resulting in
reduction of the transmission rates (conductance).
Transmission channel analysis also indicates that three conducting channels at E F
(indicated by the arrow in Fig. 9b) can be realized for the three-atom chain configuration, as shown in Fig. 9c. The first two transmission channels have transmission
eigenvalues higher than 0.1 and exhibit wave functions that reach the right electrode
block, whereas the remaining channel has a very low transmission eigenvalue and its
wave function does not reach the right electrode. Therefore, in this configuration,
two partial transmission channels contribute to the single-atom point contact. A
similar situation is confirmed for the four- and five-atom chain configurations. These
results indicate how the atomic configuration is important in determining conductance states of atomic switches.
Fig. 8 (a) Atomic
configuration of an in-line
two Ag atom chain
connected to linked three Ag
atom chain structures with
different channel lengths.
(b) Energy-dependent
conductance plot for
different channel lengths.
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