The fracture strength of ZnO nanowires vertically grown on sapphire substrates was measured in tensile and bending experiments. Nanowires with diameters between 60 and 310 nm and a typical length of 2 um were manipulated with an atomic force microscopy tip mounted on a nanomanipulator inside a scanning electron microscope. The fracture strain of (7.7 +- 0.8)% measured in the bending test was found close to the theoretical limit of 10% and revealed a strength about twice as high as in the tensile test. From the tensile experiments the Young's modulus could be measured to be within 30% of that of bulk ZnO, contrary to the lower values found in literature.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0611409,
title = {Fracture strength and Young's modulus of ZnO nanowires},
author = {S. Hoffmann and F. Ostlund and J. Michler and H. J. Fan and M. Zacharias and S. H. Christiansen and C. Ballif},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0611409},
year = {2007}
}