Elastic Properties Of Nanowires Research Articles

Reporting buckling strength and elastic properties of nanowires

Nanocrystalline-nanowires have been incorporated in many micro-/nano-scale applications. To design nanowires-based nano-devices, studies should be conducted on the characterization of the elastic properties and the buckling strengths of nanowires. The challenge associated with detecting the properties of nanowires is that their properties are size-dependent. This motivated us to propose a model for the mechanics of nanocrystalline nanowires. In the context of this model, new measures are incorportated to account for the nanowire material structure and size effects and to reflect the experimental observations of nanomaterials-nanowires. This model is then harnessed to report the ranges of the buckling strength and the elastic properties of nanowires made of nanocrystalline diamond, Si, Al, Cu, Ag, Au, and Pt, for the first time. First, we report the range of the grain boundary Young's modulus for the various nanocrystalline materials. Depending on the contents of the grain boundary and the amount of impurities, the grain boundary Young's modulus is likely to be within the reported ranges. Second, for each grain size (from 200 nm to 2 nm), we report the range of Young's modulus, shear modulus, bulk modulus, and mass density of the aforementioned nanocrystalline nanomaterials. Third, we report the buckling strength and the equivalent Young's modulus of nanowires with different sizes accounting for the nanowire surface effects. The reported ranges of the buckling strength and the elastic properties of nanowires are experimentally validated.

Simulations of the size effect on the elastic properties and the inherent mechanism of metallic nanowire

In this paper molecular dynamics (MD) method and the modified analytical embedded atom model (MAEAM) are used to investigate the size effect on the elastic properties of Ni, Al and V nanowires and the role the free surface plays. For convenience of comparison, the elastic properties of these corresponding perfect bulk materials are also studied. Results obtained indicate that the calculated values of the elastic properties of these perfect materials are in good agreement with those previously given theoretical and experimental ones. But the calculated bulk moduli of the nanowires, which are lower than those of the prefect materials, increase exponentially with increasing size of the nanowire and are nearly close to a constant (180.20 GPa for the Ni nanowire, 83.98 GPa for the Al nanowire and 162.48 GPa for the V nanowire). Meanwhile, the surface energy of the nanowire decreases exponentially with the increase of its size and reaches a minimal value (1.84 J·m-2 for the Ni nanowire, 0.77 J·m-2 for the Al nanowire, and 1.71 J·m-2 for the V nanowire), which is consistent with the corresponding bulk material. And the critical value of the size, which has a distinct effect on the elastic properties and the surface energy, is about 5.0 nm for all nanowires. On this basis, the free surface dependence of the elastic properties of these metallic nanowires and the inherent mechanisms are further discussed by exploring the size effect on the surface energies of Ni, Al and V nanowires and their distribution characteristics, showing that the free surface plays a more and more important role in the diminution of the elastic properties of nanowires as the size decreases. The mode of the surface impacting on the elastic properties of nanowire is described as follows:The surface first reduces the compressional stress of the internal core region of nanowires and then the reduced compressional stress results further in the decrease in the elastic properties of nanowires.

Elastic properties of nanowires

AbstractThe elastic properties of metallic and semiconducting nanowires were analyzed by different techniques employing static and dynamic loads. The reliability of the methods is verified by analyzing well defined microstructures and a good agreement for the values of the Young's modulus determined by the different methods was achieved. For the investigated materials systems (Au, W, Si, InN), basically no differences in the Young's moduli were observed between microstructures, bulk material, and nanowires with radii of 20–300 nm. Microstructure, morphological undulation, defects, and contaminations, however, can drastically change the apparent Young's moduli of nanowires. Examples are given, where an apparent increasing or decreasing of the Young's modulus with decreasing diameter is caused by such effects. The same effects have also influence on the fracture strength in nanowires. While perfect Au nanowires exhibit fracture strengths exceeding the bulk values up to two orders of magnitude, any anomaly causes earlier failure. In addition, failure mechanisms are observed to be dependent on the microstructure. While single crystalline Au nanowires have shown a pure elastic deformation upon load, polycrystalline nanowires show a remarkable plastic deformation before breaking.

Predicting Young’s modulus of nanowires from first-principles calculations on their surface and bulk materials

Using the concept of surface stress, we developed a model that is able to predict Young’s modulus of nanowires as a function of nanowire diameters from the calculated properties of their surface and bulk materials. We took both equilibrium strain effect and surface stress effect into consideration to account for the geometric size influence on the elastic properties of nanowires. In this work, we combined first-principles density functional theory calculations of material properties with linear elasticity theory of clamped-end three-point bending. Furthermore, we applied this computational approach to Ag, Au, and ZnO nanowires. For both Ag and Au nanowires, our theoretical predictions agree well with the experimental data in the literature. For ZnO nanowires, our predictions are qualitatively consistent with some of experimental data for ZnO nanostructures. Consequently, we found that surface stress plays a very important role in determining Young’s modulus of nanowires. Our finding suggests that the elastic properties of nanowires could be possibly engineered by altering the surface stress of their lateral surfaces.

Surface effects on elastic properties of silver nanowires: Contact atomic-force microscopy

Silver nanowires with different diameters were synthesized by a hydrothermal chemical method. The elastic properties of the nanowires with outer diameters ranging from 20 to $140\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}$ were measured using contact atomic force microscopy. The apparent Young modulus of the nanowires is found to decrease with the increase of the diameter. When the diameter of the silver nanowires is larger than $100\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}$, the Young modulus approaches a constant value. The size dependence of the apparent Young modulus of the silver nanowires is attributed to the surface effect, which includes the effects of the surface stress, the oxidation layer, and the surface roughness. Thus, a theoretical analysis is presented to explain the size dependence. This analysis is different from the previous models in that both the surface stress and the surface moduli are included in it. We also show that the apparent surface modulus and the surface stress of the silver nanowires can be experimentally determined.

Elastic properties of nanowires

We present a model to study Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of the composite material of amorphous nanowires. It is an extension of the model derived by two of us [da Fonseca and Galvão, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 175502 (2004)] to study the elastic properties of amorphous nanosprings. The model is based on twisting and tensioning a straight nanowire and we propose an experimental setup to obtain the elastic parameters of the nanowire. We used the Kirchhoff rod model to obtain the expressions for the elastic constants of the nanowire.