Nanometer-scale metallic grains connected with atomic-scale conductors

We describe a technique for connecting a nanometer-scale gold grain to leads by atomic-scale gold point contacts. These devices differ from previous metallic quantum dots in that the conducting channels are relatively well transmitting. We investigate the dependence of the Coulomb blockade on contact resistance. The high-resistance devices display Coulomb blockade and the low-resistance devices display a zero-bias conductance dip, both in quantitative agreement with theory. We find that in the intermediate regime, where the sample resistance is close to h/e(2), the I-V curve displays a Coulomb staircase with symmetric contact capacitances. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.