Investigation of Electrical Characteristics of Gold Nanowire under Tensile Test

Abstract

In this study, the electrical characteristics of gold nanowire (NW) under external tensile force were experimentally investigated. Experiments were carried out with a self-developed nanomanipulator inside the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscopye. A resistivity of for an individual gold NW was first obtained with the nanomanipulation system when no tensile force is applied, approximately 4.36 times larger than that of bulk gold. The results agree with the works of previous investigations. The electric characteristics of gold NWs under uni-axial tensile force was then investigated via the nanomanipulator. Experimental results show that the resistivity of gold NWs decreases as the applied tensile force increases, while the conductivity of the NWs as well as the mobility of electrons increases as the force increases. This indicates that the electrical characteristics of gold NWs are indeed affected by the external tensile forces applied to it.