Mechanical Researches on Young's Modulus of SCS Nanostructures

Nanostructures of SingleCrystalSilicon (SCS) with superior electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties are emerging in the development of novel nanodevices. Mechanical properties especially Young's modulus are essential in developing and utilizing such nanodevices. In this paper, experimental researches including bending tests, resonance tests, and tensile tests on Young's modulus of nanoscaled SCS are reviewed, and their results are compared. It was found that the values of E measured by different testing methods can not match to each other. As the differences cannot be explained as experimental errors, it should be understood by taking surface effect into account. With a simplified model, we qualitatively explained the difference in E value measured by tensile test and by resonance test for Si nanobeams. Copyright (C) 2009 Qinhua Jin et al.