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-MnO 2 nanorods. These unoccupied Ag 4 d orbitals strengthen the Ag–Ag bonds, greatly enhancing the stability of ASWs while the presence of delocalized 5 s 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. One-dimensional atomic metal wires can exhibit useful properties distinct from their bulk equivalents; however they typically suffer from limited stability. Here, Chen et al create atomic silver wires which are stable and exhibit a temperature dependent metal to insulator transition.