Metallicity of atomic wires

Surprisingly, like most of “metallic” wires on semiconductor surfaces, linear chains of alkaline earth on the furrowed transition metal surfaces, such as the Mo(1 1 2) surface, also do not exhibit strong metallic character but, rather, may be considered dielectric atomic chains. The adsorption bonds result in a loss in electron itinerancy, leading to greater valence electron localization in the adlayer in some cases. The localized character of the bands near the Fermi level, associated with the adlayer, is replaced by a metallic band structure when the lattice period of the adsorbed layer becomes incommensurate with the substrate periodicity along the furrows with increasing coverage of the adlayer. With changes in adlayer coverage, both theory and experiment indicate that the adsorbed layers can undergo a Wilson type nonmetal-to-metal transition.