Stable single atomic silver wires assembling into a circuitry-connectable nanoarray

Atomic metal wires have great promise for practical applications in devices due to their unique electronic properties. Unfortunately, such atomic wires are extremely unstable. Here we fabricate stable atomic silver wires (ASWs) with appreciably unoccupied states inside the parallel tunnels of α-MnO2 nanorods. These unoccupied Ag 4d orbitals strengthen the Ag–Ag bonds, greatly enhancing the stability of ASWs while the presence of delocalized 5s electrons makes the ASWs conducting. These stable ASWs form a coherently oriented three-dimensional wire array of over 10 nm in width and up to 1 μm in length allowing us to connect it to nano-electrodes. Current-voltage characteristics of ASWs show a temperature-dependent insulator-to-metal transition, suggesting that the atomic wires could be used as thermal electrical devices.

Influence of a few-atomic silver molecules on the high-order harmonic generation in the laser-produced plasmas

The plasmas containing small molecules of silver produced during ablation of the bulk silver and silver nanoparticles (NPs) at the conditions suitable for efficient harmonic generation of the ultrashort pulses propagating through the laser-produced plasmas (LPPs) were studied. The time-of-flight mass-spectroscopy studies of plasmas confirmed the presence of these species in the plasmas. We suggest that the harmonics generated during the ablation of nanoparticle and bulk targets could be enhanced due to the appearance of these small species (Ag2, Ag3) at the moment of propagation of the ultrashort laser pulses through such plasmas.