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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2011
Metallic nanowires represent very interesting systems due to new phenomena such as quantum conductance and unexpected long interatomic distances attaining 0.3–0.5 nm. These large distances represent a challenge for physical interpretation. In this work we present experimental data from transmission electron microscopy and results from ab initio density functional calculations for suspended gold chains. We show that large distances as 0.5 nm can be easily explained by the presence of carbon atoms as contaminants, while distances ranging from 0.29 up to 0.36 nm might be explained as resulting of a mixture of clean stressed and contaminated linear chains.