Fabrication and buckling behavior of polycrystalline palladium, cobalt, and rhodium nanostructures

Novel fabrication techniques were developed to manufacture polycrystalline palladium, cobalt, and rhodium nanopillars with diameters of approximately 130 nm. These nanostructures have length-to-radius ratios in the range of 4 and 20. Using uniaxial nano-compression techniques, the buckling behaviors of the produced nanopillars were characterized and critical buckling loads were extracted. The tangent moduli, which were extracted from plots of critical buckling load as a function of effective specimen cross-sectional area, of palladium, cobalt, and rhodium nanopillars are 90 ± 6 GPa, 175 ± 9 GPa, and 375 ± 23 GPa, respectively. As expected, these calculated values are slightly smaller than the bulk polycrystalline elastic moduli for all three materials. Post compression scanning electron microscope images revealed ductile behavior for palladium nanostructures, while cobalt and rhodium specimens failed by fracture.