Electromechanical testing of ZnO thin films under high uniaxial strain

Thanks to an innovative design, stress-strain curves of released thin films can be obtained, from zero stress up to the tensile fracture stress of the material, using internal stress present in a second material. This second material acts as an actuator that pulls on the sample when released from the substrate, allowing to apply a stress on the tested material. This technique has also been used to make electrical resistivity measurements under deformation to extract piezoresistive coefficients and can be extended to perform Hall measurements to measure charge carriers density and mobility as well as the resistivity.