  A streamlined technique for the electrochemical fabrication of metal
nanojunctions (MNJs) between lithographically defined electrodes is presented.
The first low-temperature transport measurements in such structures reveal
suppression of the conductance near zero-bias. The size of the zero-bias
anomaly (ZBA) depends strongly on the fabrication electrochemistry and the
dimensions of the resulting MNJ. We present evidence that the nonperturbative
ZBA in atomic-scale junctions is due to a density of states suppression in the
leads.
