Atomic Motion in Ferromagnetic Break Junctions: Comment and Response

Authors

S.-F. Shi, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
David C. Ralph, Cornell UniversityFollow
Andrei Sokolov, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Chunjuan Zhang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Evgeny Y. Tsymbal, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Jody G. Redepenning, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Bernard Doudin, Institut de Physique et de Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg (IPCMS), UMR 7504 CNRS-ULP, 67034 Strasbourg, FranceFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2007

Comments

Published in Nature Nanotechnology 2 (2007), pp. 522–523; doi:10.1038/nnano.2007.251a & doi:10.1038/nnano.2007.251b Copyright © 2007 Nature Publishing Group. Used by permission.

Abstract

Authors’ response

In their comment, Shi and Ralph emphasize that conductance of Ni point contacts produced by an electro-migration technique can occasionally exhibit two-level fluctuations (TLF), mimicking the discrete steps in the conductance of the point contacts as a function of the applied magnetic-field direction. They explain the nature of these steps in terms of atomic motion rather than intrinsic electronic effect. We emphasize in this reply that our results, obtained on a different magnetic material synthesized by a different method, do not show a