Geometry dependent I–V characteristics of gold atomic-sized contacts

Atomic-sized contacts have attracted significant attention by continuing miniaturization of nanoscale electronic components for the two past decades. In present work, the electronic transport properties of gold atomic-sized contacts are studied using the non-equilibrium Green's function technique on the density functional tight binding method for modelling the geometry dependent I-V characteristics. The gold contacts are sandwiched between (001) electrodes, and the electronic current is deduced according to the Landauer formulation to study the effect of contact geometry structure.