Approaching the ideal elastic strain limit in silicon nanowires
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e1501382.full.pdf
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7.47 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4b3776b939b87f012221c92b98543447
Author(s)
Date Issued
August 2016
Journal
Science Advances
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Zhang, H. et al. “Approaching the Ideal Elastic Strain Limit in Silicon Nanowires.” Science Advances 2, 8 (August 2016): e1501382–e1501382 © 2016 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Achieving high elasticity for silicon (Si) nanowires, one of the most important and versatile building blocks in nanoelectronics, would enable their application in flexible electronics and bio-nano interfaces. We show that vapor-liquid-solid-grown single-crystalline Si nanowires with diameters of ~100 nm can be repeatedly stretched above 10% elastic strain at room temperature, approaching the theoretical elastic limit of silicon (17 to 20%). A few samples even reached ~16% tensile strain, with estimated fracture stress up to ~20 GPa. The deformations were fully reversible and hysteresis-free under loading-unloading tests with varied strain rates, and the failures still occurred in brittle fracture, with no visible sign of plasticity. The ability to achieve this "deep ultra-strength" for Si nanowires can be attributed mainly to their pristine, defect-scarce, nanosized single-crystalline structure and atomically smooth surfaces. This result indicates that semiconductor nanowires could have ultra-large elasticity with tunable band structures for promising "elastic strain engineering" applications.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/SCIADV.1501382
