Tensile testing of fullerene nano wire using electrostatic MEMS device

In this paper, we report tensile testing of a fullerene wire using an electrostatic MEMS device which can test nano-scale materials. We developed an electrostatic MEMS tensile testing device which has a comb drive actuator to apply tensile force to a specimen and two capacitances for measurement of the displacement to measure the elongation and applied force of the specimen. A free-standing fullerene wire which was about 16 mum long, 2mum wide and 40nm thick was integrated on the device and the tensile testing of the wire was successfully demonstrated with nano order resolutions. Measured Young´s modulus and tensile strength of the wire were 5.9 GPa, 17 MPa, respectively.