Dynamical Coulomb Blockade Observed in Nano-Sized Electrical Contacts

Electrical contacts between nano-engineered systems are expected to constitute the basic building blocks of future nano-scale electronics. However, the accurate characterization and understanding of electrical contacts at the nano-scale is an experimentally challenging task. Here we employ low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy to investigate the conductance of individual nano-contacts formed between flat Pb islands and their supporting substrates. We observe a suppression of the differential tunnel conductance at small bias voltages due to dynamical Coulomb blockade effects. The differential conductance spectra allow us to determine the capacitances and resistances of the electrical contacts which depend systematically on the island--substrate contact area. Calculations based on the theory of environmentally assisted tunneling agree well with the measurements.