Atomically controlled fabrications of subnanometer scale electrode gaps

We report electrode gap formations at high temperatures using a self-breaking technique. We obtained narrow distributions of the size of Au electrode gaps d(gap) centered at about 0.5 nm at temperatures below 380 K. At higher temperatures, on the other hand, we find larger d(gap) distributing around 0.8 nm. The present results demonstrate the possible use of high temperature Au nanocontact self-breaking processes for controlled fabrications of electrode gaps useful for DNA sequence read out with quantum mechanics. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3487483]