Electrostatic Tensile Testing Device With Nanonewton and Nanometer Resolution and Its Application to Nanowire Testing

In this paper, we report a test stand device for tensile testing nanoscale materials and its application to testing of a fullerene wire. We have developed an electrostatic microelectromechanical-systems tensile testing device which has a comb drive actuator to apply tensile force to a specimen and two capacitances for sensing the displacement to measure the elongation and applied force of the specimen. The force and displacement measurement resolutions have been demonstrated as 2 nN and 0.2 nm, respectively. A freestanding fullerene wire which was about 16 μm long, 2 μm wide, and 40 nm thick was integrated on the device, and the tensile testing of the wire was successfully demonstrated with nano-order resolutions. Measured Young's modulus and tensile strength of the wire were 5.9 GPa and 17 MPa, respectively.