On the structural and stability features of linear atomic suspended chains formed from gold nanowires stretching

Metallic nanowires (NWs) have been intensily investigated in the past years, but details on their formation are still not completely understood. In this work we report high resolution transmission electron microscopy data and molecular dynamics simulation results for gold NW elongation. Our results show that different initial crystallographic orientations lead to very differentiated linear atomic suspended chain (LAC) formations and strongly support that kinetic aspects are the dominant mechanisms determining the LAC morphologies.