Conductance Quantization in Bismuth Nanowires at 4 K

Conductance experiments on Bi nanowires at 4 K, obtained with a scanning tunneling microscope, are presented. The conductance of these Bi nanocontacts, formed between two Bi electrodes, exhibits plateaus at quantized values of G₀0ex0ex=0ex0ex2e²/h, remaining basically constant during electrode separations of about 50 nm. This is the first time that such plateaus have been observed in semimetals. The histogram of conductance values, constructed with thousands of consecutive contact breakage conductance experiments, exhibits clear peaks at G₀ and 2G₀.