Strain distributionand electronic property modifications in Si/Ge axial nanowires hetrostructures

Molecular dynamics simulations were carried out for Si/Ge axial nanowire heterostructures using modified effective atom method (MEAM) potentials. A Si–Ge MEAM interatomic cross potential was developed based on available experimental data and was used for these studies. The atomic distortions and strain distributions near the Si/Ge interfaces are predicted for nanowires with their axes oriented along the [111] direction. The cases of 10 and 25 nm diameter Si/Ge biwires and of 25 nm diameter Si/Ge/Si axial heterostructures with the Ge disk 1 nm thick were studied. Substantial distortions in the height of the atoms adjacent to the interface were found for the biwires but not for the Ge disks. Strains as high as 3.5% were found for the Ge disk and values of 2%–2.5% were found at the Si and Ge interfacial layers in the biwires. Deformation potential theory was used to estimate the influence of the strains on the band gap, and reductions in band gap to as small as 40% of bulk values are predicted for the Ge disks. The localized regions of increased strain and resulting energy minima were also found within the Si/Ge biwire interfaces with the larger effects on the Ge side of the interface. The regions of strain maxima near and within the interfaces are anticipated to be useful for tailoring band gaps and producing quantum confinement of carriers. These results suggest that nanowire heterostructures provide greater design flexibility in band structure modification than is possible with planar layer growth

Viscoelasticity and high buckling stress of dense carbon nanotube brushes

We report on the mechanical behavior of a dense brush of small-diameter (1–3 nm) non-catalytic multiwall (2–4 walls) carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with ~10 times higher density than CNT brushes produced by other methods. Under compression with spherical indenters of different radii, these highly dense CNT brushes exhibit a higher modulus (~17–20 GPa) and orders of magnitude higher resistance to buckling than vapor phase deposited CNT brushes or carbon walls. We also demonstrate the viscoelastic behavior, caused by the increased influence of the van der Waals’ forces in these highly dense CNT brushes, showing their promise for energy-absorbing coatings

Cracking in hydrogen ion-implanted Si/Si0.8Ge0.2/Si heterostructures

We demonstrate that a controllable cracking can be realized in Si with a buried strain layer when hydrogen is introduced using traditional H-ion implantation techniques. However, H stimulated cracking is dependent on H projected ranges; cracking occurs along a Si0.8Ge0.2 strain layer only if the H projected range is shallower than the depth of the strained layer. The absence of cracking for H ranges deeper than the strain layer is attributed to ion-irradiation induced strain relaxation, which is confirmed by Rutherford-backscattering-spectrometry channeling angular scans. The study reveals the importance of strain in initializing continuous cracking with extremely low H concentrations

Increasing the fracture toughness of silicon by ion implantation

This study was motivated by some earlier indications that the fracture toughness of silicon could be increased by ion implantation. The location of fracture in hydrogen implanted silicon was found to change depending on the dose of implanted ions. For relatively low doses, fracture occurred at the center of the damage region created by implantation. However, for larger doses, the fracture location switched to the deeper edge of the implanted zone. This implied that the center of the implanted region experienced toughening due to ion implantation at the higher dose level. In addition, an initial increase in fracture toughness with radiation dose has been observed experimentally in some ceramics. After the initial increase, the fracture toughness reaches a peak and then decreases with further irradiation. The toughness increases found thus far are modest (25-100%). In attempts to explain the experimental results, several toughening mechanisms (such as deflection of the crack by the irradiated damage) have been proposed. However, the proposed mechanisms predict only a 40-80% increase in fracture toughness, which does not account for the highest levels of toughness observed. Our recent molecular dynamics (MD) calculations have found a previously unknown toughening mechanism acting in silicon, which can also explain the earlier experimental observations of toughening induced by irradiation. In our MD simulations, ion implantation produced clusters of disordered atoms. The presence of these clusters allowed silicon to deform plastically as a crack approached, blunting the crack tip and arresting crack growth. The MD calculations show a factor of 3 increase in fracture toughness. We have conducted experiments with silicon implanted with a small dose (ions/cm2) of alpha particles uniformly distributed to a depth of 25 pm. A 20% increase in fracture toughness is observed. Additional experiments with higher implantation doses are planned for the immediate future

The interplay of crack hopping, delamination and interface failure in drying nanoparticle films

Films formed through the drying of nanoparticle suspensions release the build-up of strain through a variety of different mechanisms including shear banding, crack formation and delamination. Here we show that important connections exist between these different phenomena: delamination depends on the dynamics of crack hopping, which in turn is influenced by the presence of shear bands. We also show that delamination does not occur uniformly across the film. As cracks hop they locally initiate the delamination of the film which warps with a timescale much longer than that associated with the hopping of cracks. The motion of a small region of the delamination front, where the shear component of interfacial crack propagation is believed to be enhanced, results in the deposition of a complex zig-zag pattern on the supporting substrate

Measuring the dynamic mechanical response of hydrated mouse bone by nanoindentation

This study demonstrates a novel approach to characterizing hydrated bone's viscoelastic behavior at lamellar length scales using dynamic indentation techniques. We studied the submicron-level viscoelastic response of bone tissue from two different inbred mouse strains, A/J and B6, with known differences in whole bone and tissue-level mechanical properties. Our results show that bone having a higher collagen content or a lower mineral-to-matrix ratio demonstrates a trend towards a larger viscoelastic response. When normalized for anatomical location relative to biological growth patterns in the antero-medial (AM) cortex, bone tissue from B6 femora, known to have a lower mineral-to-matrix ratio, is shown to exhibit a significantly higher viscoelastic response compared to A/J tissue. Newer bone regions with a higher collagen content (closer to the endosteal edge of the AM cortex) showed a trend towards a larger viscoelastic response. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of this technique for analyzing local composition-property relationships in bone. Further, this technique of viscoelastic nanoindentation mapping of the bone surface at these submicron length scales is shown to be highly advantageous in studying subsurface features, such as porosity, of wet hydrated biological specimens, which are difficult to identify using other methods

Catalyst composition and impurity-dependent kinetics of nanowire heteroepitaxy.

The mechanisms and kinetics of axial Ge-Si nanowire heteroepitaxial growth based on the tailoring of the Au catalyst composition via Ga alloying are studied by environmental transmission electron microscopy combined with systematic ex situ CVD calibrations. The morphology of the Ge-Si heterojunction, in particular, the extent of a local, asymmetric increase in nanowire diameter, is found to depend on the Ga composition of the catalyst, on the TMGa precursor exposure temperature, and on the presence of dopants. To rationalize the findings, a general nucleation-based model for nanowire heteroepitaxy is established which is anticipated to be relevant to a wide range of material systems and device-enabling heterostructures.S.H. acknowledges funding from ERC grant InsituNANO (No. 279342). A.D.G. acknowledges funding from the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission and the National Science Foundation. C.D. acknowledges funding from the Royal Society. A portion of the research was also performed using EMSL, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL is operated by Battelle for the U.S. DOE under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. We gratefully acknowledge the use of facilities within the LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science at Arizona State University. This work was performed in part at CINT, a U.S. DOE, Office of Science User Facility. The research was funded in part by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at LANL, an affirmative action equal opportunity employer operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. DOE under Contract DE-AC52-06NA25396.This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Nano, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn402208p. Gamalski AD, Perea DE, Yoo J, Li N, Olszta MJ, Colby R, Schreiber DK, Ducati C, Picraux ST, Hofmann S, ACS Nano 2013, 7 (9), 7689–7697, doi:10.1021/nn402208