Electromigration—a critical failure mode of metal interconnects in integrated circuits—has been exploited for constructing nanometer-sized gaps (or nanogaps, less than a few nanometers) on metallic nanowires. Electromigrated nanogaps have been utilized extensively in the field of nanotechnology and have demonstrated to be an effective platform for electrically accessing small things such as molecules in a device fashion, establishing metal-molecule-metal junctions. These devices allow the study of the electronic transport phenomena through molecules and DNA. Furthermore, electromigrated nanogaps can read out incident electromagnetic fields as an antenna due to the plasmonic excitation on the surface, which is usually maximized in nanogaps. Moreover, structural changes caused by electromigration on metallic nanowires have been leveraged to create single-component resistive switching memories. In this review, we discuss the recent progress and challenges of electromigration methods for a nanogap creation as well as their applications for electronic devices (molecular/DNA devices and resistive switches), thermoelectric energy conversion devices, and photonic devices (nanoantennas).

中文翻译：

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电迁移的纳米间隙：审查的制造和应用程序。

电迁移是集成电路中金属互连的一种关键故障模式，已被利用来在金属纳米线上构造纳米级的间隙（或纳米间隙，小于几纳米）。电迁移的纳米间隙已在纳米技术领域得到广泛利用，并已证明是一种以设备方式电访问小分子（例如分子），建立金属-分子-金属连接的有效平台。这些设备允许研究通过分子和DNA的电子传输现象。此外，由于表面上的等离子体激元激发，电迁移的纳米间隙可以读出入射的电磁场作为天线，通常在纳米间隙中最大化。此外，由金属纳米线上的电迁移引起的结构变化已被利用来创建单组分电阻式开关存储器。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了纳米间隙产生电迁移方法的最新进展和挑战，以及它们在电子设备（分子/ DNA设备和电阻开关），热电能量转换设备和光子设备（纳米天线）中的应用。