Effect of disorder on the conductance of a Cu atomic point contact

Abstract

We present a systematic study of the effect of the disorder in copper point contacts. We show that peaks in the conductance histogram of copper point contacts shift upon addition of nickel impurities. The shift increases initially linerarly with the nickel concentration, thus confirming that it is due to disorder in the nanowire, in accordance with predictions. In general, this shift is modelled as a resistance R_s which is placed in series with the contact resistance R_c. However, we obtain different R_s values for the two peaks in the histogram, R_s being larger for the peak at higher conductance.