Abstract
Metallic nanowires are of great interest as interconnects in future nanoelectronic circuits. They
also represent important systems for understanding the complexity of electronic interactions and
conductivity in one-dimension. We have fabricated exceptionally long and uniform YSi2
nanowires via self-assembly of yttrium atoms on Si(001). The thinnest wires represent one of the
closest realizations of the isolated Peierls chain, exhibiting van-Hove type singularities in the one-
dimensional density of states and charge order fluctuations below 150 K. The structure of the
wire was determined though a detailed comparison of scanning tunneling microscopy data and
first-principles calculations. Sporadic broadenings of the wires' cross section imply the existence
of a novel metal-semiconductor junction whose electronic properties are governed by the finite-
size- and temperature-scaling of the charge ordering correlation.
