Impact of dimerization and stretching on the transport properties of molybdenum atomic wires

We study the electrical and transport properties of monatomic Mo wires with different structural characteristics. We consider first periodic wires with interatomic distances ranging between the dimerized wire to that formed by equidistant atoms. We find that the dimerized case has a gap in the electronic structure which makes it insulating, as opposed to the equidistant or near-equidistant cases which are metallic. We also simulate two conducting one-dimensional Mo electrodes separated by a scattering region which contains a number of dimers between 1 and 6. The I-V characteristics strongly depend on the number of dimers and vary from ohmic to tunneling, with the presence of different gaps. We also find that stretched chains are ferromagnetic.