Quantum conductance in semimetallic bismuth nanocontacts.

Topologically protected quantum transport in locally exfoliated bismuth at room temperature.

We report electrical conductance measurements of Bi nanocontacts created by repeated tip-surface indentation using a scanning tunneling microscope at temperatures of 4 and 300 K. As a function of the elongation of the nanocontact, we measure robust, tens of nanometers long plateaus of conductance G0 = 2e2/h at room temperature. This observation can be accounted for by the mechanical exfoliation...

Magneto - optical effects in semimetallic Bi

We report the results of infrared and magneto-optical spectroscopy study on electrodynamic response of bismuth doped with 1.5% of antimony. The spectra are presented for temperatures down to 4.2 K, and in magnetic fields as high as 18 T. The results reveal strong magneto-optical activity, similar to pure bismuth, however there are some differences introduced by antimony doping. Analysis of opti...

Point contact Andreev reflection from semimetallic bismuth—The roles of the minority carriers and the large spin-orbit coupling

Electronic structure and transport properties of atomic NiO spinvalves

Ab-initio quantum transport calculations show that short NiO chains suspended in Ni nanocontacts present a very strong spinpolarization of the conductance. The generalized gradient approximation we use here predicts a similiar polarization of the conductance as the one previously computed with non-local exchange, confirming the robustness of the result. Their use as nanoscopic spinvalves is pro...

On the role of the nonlocal Hartree-Fock exchange in ab initio quantum transport: H2 in Pt nanocontacts revisited.

We propose a practical way to overcome the ubiquitous problem of the overestimation of the zero-bias and zero-temperature conductance, which is associated with the use of local approximations to the exchange-correlation functional in density-functional theory when applied to quantum transport. This is done through partial substitution of the local exchange term in the functional by the nonlocal...