During the period of my PhD study, I have designed and successfully fabricated the supported gold nanowire and the suspended gold nanobridge samples specifically for the mechanical tests and for the electrochemical tests. Take gold nanobridge sample as an example, a highly efficient and reliable atomic force microscope - based multi-point bending test method was provided for the mechanical characterization of one dimensional nanomaterials. Considering the nanoscale of the measured deflection in the bending tests, the influence of contact deformation between the AFM tip and the sample surface was analyzed using a selected adhesion elastic-plastic contact model. The method to determine the most appropriate contact model from the various existed models for a specific test system wa...[ Read more ]

During the period of my PhD study, I have designed and successfully fabricated the supported gold nanowire and the suspended gold nanobridge samples specifically for the mechanical tests and for the electrochemical tests. Take gold nanobridge sample as an example, a highly efficient and reliable atomic force microscope - based multi-point bending test method was provided for the mechanical characterization of one dimensional nanomaterials. Considering the nanoscale of the measured deflection in the bending tests, the influence of contact deformation between the AFM tip and the sample surface was analyzed using a selected adhesion elastic-plastic contact model. The method to determine the most appropriate contact model from the various existed models for a specific test system was also provided. Faradaic and non-Faradaic behaviors of the supported gold nanowire and the suspended gold nanobridge samples in sulfuric acid solutions were investigated with different electrolyte concentrations, different scan rates and at different temperatures.