Abstract
In order to investigate the size effect of a singular stress field on the fracture toughness at the nanometer scale, crack propagation tests are carried out using small single-crystal silicon specimens with different precrack lengths where the size of the singular stress field near the crack tip is 23-57.9 nm. The fracture toughness, K_<IC>, is ebvaluated to be approximately 1 MPam^<1/2>, which is in good agreement with that of the bulk counterpart. This obviously indicates that the fracture toughness is independent of size while it has been reported that the tensile strength without a crack shows strong dependence at the nanometer scale.
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