Distributions of atomic wire lengths

Controlled growth of metal monatomic wires would enable on-demand tuning of electronic and magnetic properties in this new class of materials. Prior to this work, it was believed that the binding energy can be determined from the distribution of the lengths of the wires. Another misconception was that the antiripening mechanism or quantum effects are responsible for the growth of wires during postdeposition annealing. Combining kinetic Monte Carlo and first-principles density-functional theory calculations, we study the growth of one-dimensional atomic wires on the steps of vicinal surfaces. We show that for a large value of the bond energy, the antiripening mechanism and quantum effects do not affect the length of metal monatomic wires. The conditions under which wires with magic length appear are determined. The observed mechanism of wire growth will be useful both for explaining the experimental data and for creating atomic wires with a given length.