Towards unified understanding of conductance of stretched monatomic contacts

Abstract

When monatomic contacts are stretched, their conductance behaves in qualitatively different ways depending on their constituent atomic elements. Under a single assumption of resonance formation, we show that various conductance behaviors can be understood in a unified way in terms of the response of the resonance to stretching. This analysis clarifies the crucial roles played by the number of valence electrons, charge neutrality, and orbital shapes.