Test Bed for Mechanical Characterization of Nanowires

Author(s):  
A. V. Desai ◽  
M. A. Haque

Nanowires are one-dimensional solids that are deemed to be the building-block materials for next-generation sensors and actuators. Owing to their unique length scale, they exhibit superior mechanical properties and other length-scale-dependent phenomena. Most of these are challenging to explore, owing to the difficulties in specimen preparation, manipulation, and the requirement of high-resolution force and displacement sensing. To address these issues, a micromechanical device for uniaxial mechanical testing of single nanowires and nanotubes is used here. The device has 10 nN force and 1 nm displacement resolution and its small size (2 ×1 mm) allows for in situ experimentation inside analytical chambers, such as the electron microscopes. A microscale pick-and-place technique is presented as a generic specimen preparation and manipulation method for testing single nanowires. Preliminary results on zinc oxide nanowires show the Young's modulus and fracture strain to be about 76 GPa and 8 per cent respectively.

Author(s):  
A. V. Desai ◽  
M. A. Haque

Semiconductor nanowires like zinc oxide nanowires are potential materials for future nanoscale sensors and actuators. Due to their unique length scale, they are expected to have length-scale dependent mechanical properties. In this paper, we report experimental investigations on the mechanical properties of zinc oxide nanowires. We have designed a MEMS test-bed for mechanical characterization of nanowires and use a microscale version of pick-and-place as a generic specimen preparation and manipulation technique. We performed experiments on zinc oxide nanowires inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and estimated the Young's modulus to be approximately 21 GPa and the fracture strain to vary from 5 % to 15 %.


JOM ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-493
Author(s):  
Qiang Guo ◽  
Xidan Fu ◽  
Xiaolei Guo ◽  
Zhiying Liu ◽  
Yan Shi ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1695-1707 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renu Sharma

The world of nanomaterials has become the real world for most applications in the area of nanotechnology. As postsynthesis handling of materials at the nanoscale level is impractical, nanomaterials must be synthesized directly as part of a device or circuit. The demands of nanotechnology have led to modifications in the design of transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) that enable in situ synthesis and characterization simultaneously. The environmental TEM (ETEM) is one such modified instrument that has often been used to follow gas–solid and/or liquid–solid interactions at elevated temperatures. Although the history and development of the ETEM, also called the controlled atmosphere or environmental cell TEM, is as old as transmission electron microscopy itself, developments in the design of medium-voltage TEMs have succeeded in bringing resolutions down to the subnanometer level. A modern ETEM equipped with a field-emission gun, energy filter or electron energy-loss spectrometer, scanning transmission electron microscopy coils, and bright-field and dark-field detectors can be a versatile tool for understanding chemical processes at the nanometer level. This article reviews the design and operations of a dedicated ETEM. Its applications range from the in situ characterization of reaction steps, such as oxidation-reduction and hydroxylation, to the in situ synthesis of nanomaterials, such as quantum dots and carbon nanotubes. Some examples of the current and the future applications for the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials are also discussed.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 375-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.A. Haque ◽  
H.D. Espinosa ◽  
H.J. Lee

AbstractMechanical testing of micro- and nanoscale materials is challenging due to the intricate nature of specimen preparation and handling and the required load and displacement resolution. In addition, in Situ testing requires the entire experimental setup to be drastically miniaturized, because conventional high-resolution microscopes or analytical tools usually have very small chambers. These challenges are increasingly being addressed using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based sensors and actuators. Because of their very small size, MEMS-based experimental setups are the natural choice for materials characterization under virtually all forms of in Situ electron, optical, and probe microscopy. The unique advantage of such in Situ studies is the simultaneous acquisition of qualitative (up to near atomic visualization of microstructures and deformation mechanisms) and quantitative (load, displacement, flaw size) information of fundamental materials behavior. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art overview of design and fabrication of MEMS-based devices for nanomechanical testing. We also provide a few case studies on thin films, nanowires, and nanotubes, as well as adhesion-friction testing with a focus on in Situ microscopy. We conclude that MEMS devices offer superior choices in handling, actuation, and force and displacement resolutions. Particularly, their tight tolerances and small footprints are difficult to match by off-the-shelf techniques.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Manoharan ◽  
A. V. Desai ◽  
G. Neely ◽  
M. A. Haque

Zinc oxide nanowires, nanobelts, and nanoneedles were synthesized using the vapor-liquid-solid technique. Young's modulus of the nanowires was measured by performing cantilever bending experiments on individual nanowires in situ inside a scanning electron microscope. The nanowires tested had diameters in the range of 200–750 nm. The average Young's modulus, measured to be 40 GPa, is about 30% of that reported at the bulk scale. The experimental results are discussed in light of the pronounced electromechanical coupling due to the piezoelectric nature of the material.


Author(s):  
R. E. Herfert

Studies of the nature of a surface, either metallic or nonmetallic, in the past, have been limited to the instrumentation available for these measurements. In the past, optical microscopy, replica transmission electron microscopy, electron or X-ray diffraction and optical or X-ray spectroscopy have provided the means of surface characterization. Actually, some of these techniques are not purely surface; the depth of penetration may be a few thousands of an inch. Within the last five years, instrumentation has been made available which now makes it practical for use to study the outer few 100A of layers and characterize it completely from a chemical, physical, and crystallographic standpoint. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) provides a means of viewing the surface of a material in situ to magnifications as high as 250,000X.


Author(s):  
J. I. Bennetch

In a recent study of the superplastic forming (SPF) behavior of certain Al-Li-X alloys, the relative misorientation between adjacent (sub)grains proved to be an important parameter. It is well established that the most accurate way to determine misorientation across boundaries is by Kikuchi line analysis. However, the SPF study required the characterization of a large number of (sub)grains in each sample to be statistically meaningful, a very time-consuming task even for comparatively rapid Kikuchi analytical techniques.In order to circumvent this problem, an alternate, even more rapid in-situ Kikuchi technique was devised, eliminating the need for the developing of negatives and any subsequent measurements on photographic plates. All that is required is a double tilt low backlash goniometer capable of tilting ± 45° in one axis and ± 30° in the other axis. The procedure is as follows. While viewing the microscope screen, one merely tilts the specimen until a standard recognizable reference Kikuchi pattern is centered, making sure, at the same time, that the focused electron beam remains on the (sub)grain in question.


Author(s):  
Steve Lindaas ◽  
Chris Jacobsen ◽  
Alex Kalinovsky ◽  
Malcolm Howells

Soft x-ray microscopy offers an approach to transmission imaging of wet, micron-thick biological objects at a resolution superior to that of optical microscopes and with less specimen preparation/manipulation than electron microscopes. Gabor holography has unique characteristics which make it particularly well suited for certain investigations: it requires no prefocussing, it is compatible with flash x-ray sources, and it is able to use the whole footprint of multimode sources. Our method serves to refine this technique in anticipation of the development of suitable flash sources (such as x-ray lasers) and to develop cryo capabilities with which to reduce specimen damage. Our primary emphasis has been on biological imaging so we use x-rays in the water window (between the Oxygen-K and Carbon-K absorption edges) with which we record holograms in vacuum or in air.The hologram is recorded on a high resolution recording medium; our work employs the photoresist poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA). Following resist “development” (solvent etching), a surface relief pattern is produced which an atomic force microscope is aptly suited to image.


Author(s):  
L. Wan ◽  
R. F. Egerton

INTRODUCTION Recently, a new compound carbon nitride (CNx) has captured the attention of materials scientists, resulting from the prediction of a metastable crystal structure β-C3N4. Calculations showed that the mechanical properties of β-C3N4 are close to those of diamond. Various methods, including high pressure synthesis, ion beam deposition, chemical vapor deposition, plasma enhanced evaporation, and reactive sputtering, have been used in an attempt to make this compound. In this paper, we present the results of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) analysis of composition and bonding structure of CNX films deposited by two different methods.SPECIMEN PREPARATION Specimens were prepared by arc-discharge evaporation and reactive sputtering. The apparatus for evaporation is similar to the traditional setup of vacuum arc-discharge evaporation, but working in a 0.05 torr ambient of nitrogen or ammonia. A bias was applied between the carbon source and the substrate in order to generate more ions and electrons and change their energy. During deposition, this bias causes a secondary discharge between the source and the substrate.


Author(s):  
K. Ogura ◽  
T. Suzuki ◽  
C. Nielsen

In spite of the complicated specimen preparation, Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEM) have traditionally been used for the investigation of the fine grain structures of sintered ceramics. Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) have not been used much for the same purpose as TEM because of poor results caused by the specimen charging effect, and also the lack of sufficient resolution. Here, we are presenting a successful result of high resolution imaging of sintered alumina (pure Al2O3) using the Specimen Heated and Electron Beam Induced Conductivity (SHEBIC) method, which we recently reported, in an ultrahigh resolution SEM (UHR-SEM). The JSM-6000F, equipped with a Field Emission Gun (FEG) and an in-lens specimen position, was used for this application.After sintered Al2O3 was sliced into a piece approximately 0.5 mm in thickness, one side was mechanically polished to get a shiny plane for the observation. When the observation was started at 20 kV, an enormous charging effect occured, and it was impossible to obtain a clear Secondary Electron (SE) image (Fig.1).


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