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 %.

Volume Subject Area:
Microelectromechanical Systems
Topics:
Nanowires, Mechanical properties, Actuators, Fracture (Materials), Fracture (Process), Microelectromechanical systems, Microscale devices, Nanoscale phenomena, Scanning electron microscopes, Semiconductors (Materials), Sensors, Young's modulus
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