The nano-mechanical property of the single ZnO nanowire by scanning electron microscope nano-probe system

The single ZnO nanowire with high Young's modulus is expected as an excellent mechanical material and the nano-mechanics measurement by scanning electron microscope(SEM) nano-probe system is considered as an efficient method in nano-mechanics measurement. In this work, the single ZnO nanowire is synthesized via thermal evaporation and the mechanical properties is measured by the developed micromanipulator nanoprobe system installed in theSEM chamber. It is rarely that the micromanipulator nanoprobe system are combined with the nanocantilever model to characterize the mechanical properties, in especially the SEM system could eliminate the electrostatic force or perturbance efficiently and the make the electrode free, the sample could be manipulated in real time and the force-displacement could be obtained at each step. By calculating, the average value of Young's modulus for a single ZnO nanowire is 289.4 Gpa, which is much higher than the bulk ZnO(c(33) = 210 GPa). Further, the deviation and mechanism are discussed, which indicate that this method is reasonable. It's significant that method could be applied to most of one dimensional nanostructure.