Correlation Histograms in Conductance Measurements of Nanowires Formed at Semiconductor Interfaces

We demonstrate experimentally that conductance steps can occur in nanowires formed at metal-semiconductor junctions, between a cobalt tip and a germanium surface revealing long-duration plateaus at reproducible levels. The high reproducibility of the conductance traces obtained leads to very sharp peaks in the conductance histogram suggesting formation of stable atomic configurations. We develop a new type of correlation analysis of the preferred conductance values that provide new type of information on a few-atomic-nanocontact formation dynamics.