Admittance of Atomic and Molecular Junctions and Their Signal Transmission

Atom-sized contacts of metals are usually characterized by their direct current (DC) conductance. However, when atom-sized contacts are used as device interconnects and transmit high frequency signals or fast pulses, the most critical parameter is not their DC conductance but their admittance Y(ω), in particular its imaginary part ImY(ω). In this article, I will present a brief survey of theoretical and experimental results on the magnitude of Y(ω) for atom-sized contacts of metals. Theoretical contact models are first described and followed by numerical evaluation of ImY(ω) based on these models. As for experiments on Y(ω), previous experiments conducted under time-varying biases are surveyed, and then the results of direct signal transmission through atom-sized contacts are discussed. Both theoretical and experimental results indicate that ImY(ω) is negligibly small for typical atom-sized contacts for signal frequencies up to 1 GHz.