First-principles study of electron-conduction properties of helical gold nanowires.
Multishell helical gold nanowires (HGNs) suspended between semi-infinite electrodes are found to exhibit peculiar electron-conduction properties by first-principles calculations based on the density functional theory. Our results that the numbers of conduction channels in the HGNs and their conductances are smaller than those expected from a single-atom row nanowire verify the recent experiment. In addition, we obtained a more striking result that, in the cases of thin HGNs, distinct magnetic fields are induced by the electronic current helically flowing around the shells. This finding indicates that the HGNs can be good candidates for nanometer-scale solenoids.
Ono
Tomoya
T
Research Center for Ultra-Precision Science and Technology, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
Hirose
Kikuji
K