ATOMIC-SIZED METALLIC CONTACTS - MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES AND ELECTRONICTRANSPORT

Measuring simultaneously the force and the conductance during the form ation and rupture of an atomic-sized gold contact at room temperature, we observe that deformation occurs as a sequence of structural transf ormations involving elastic and yielding stages and that force and con ductance before rupture have definite values which are likely to corre spond to a single atom contact. We measure the mechanical properties o f contacts consisting of only a few atoms and show that the stepwise v ariation of the conductance is always due to the atomic rearrangements in the contact.