Nano Express
Mechanical Properties of Silicon Nanowires
1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Catholic University of Daegu, Gyeongbuk, 712-702, Republic of Korea
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, 136-701, Republic of Korea
3 Department of Chemical Engineering, Hanyang University, Gyeonggi-do, 426-791, Republic of Korea
4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yonsei University, Kangwon-do, 220-740, Republic of Korea
Nanoscale Research Letters 2009, 5:211-216 doi:10.1007/s11671-009-9467-7
Published: 27 October 2009Abstract
Nanowires have been taken much attention as a nanoscale building block, which can perform the excellent mechanical function as an electromechanical device. Here, we have performed atomic force microscope (AFM)-based nanoindentation experiments of silicon nanowires in order to investigate the mechanical properties of silicon nanowires. It is shown that stiffness of nanowires is well described by Hertz theory and that elastic modulus of silicon nanowires with various diameters from ~100 to ~600 nm is close to that of bulk silicon. This implies that the elastic modulus of silicon nanowires is independent of their diameters if the diameter is larger than 100 nm. This supports that finite size effect (due to surface effect) does not play a role on elastic behavior of silicon nanowires with diameter of >100 nm.
