Exploiting elastic buckling of high-strength gold nanowire toward stable electrical probing

Jong-Hyun Seo; Sung-Gyu Kang; Yigil Cho; Harold S Park; Youngdong Yoo; Bongsoo Kim; In-Suk Choi; Jae-Pyoung Ahn

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105199

Exploiting elastic buckling of high-strength gold nanowire toward stable electrical probing

iScience. 2022 Sep 23;25(10):105199. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105199. eCollection 2022 Oct 21.

Authors

Jong-Hyun Seo¹, Sung-Gyu Kang², Yigil Cho², Harold S Park³, Youngdong Yoo^{4

5}, Bongsoo Kim⁴, In-Suk Choi², Jae-Pyoung Ahn¹

Affiliations

¹ Advanced Analysis Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul 02792, Korea.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, Korea.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea.

Abstract

Buckling is a loss of structural stability. It occurs in long slender structures or thin plate structures which is subjected to compressive forces. For the structural materials, such a sudden change in shape has been considered to be avoided. In this study, we utilize the Au nanowire's buckling instability for the electrical measurement. We confirmed that the high-strength single crystalline Au nanowire with an aspect ratio of 150 and 230-nm-diameter shows classical Euler buckling under constant compressive force without failure. The buckling instability enables stable contact between the Au nanowire and the substrate without any damage. Clearly, the in situ electrical measurement shows a transition of the contact resistance between the nanowire and the substrate from the Sharvin (ballistic limit) mode to the Holm (Ohmic) mode during deformation, enabling reliable electrical measurements. This study suggests Au nanowire probes exhibiting structural instability to ensure stable and precise electrical measurements at the nanoscale.

Keywords: Materials science; Mechanical processing; Mechanics of materials.