Mechanical characterisation of nanocrystalline graphite using micromechanical structures

摘要

Conductive nanocrystalline graphite has been deposited using plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition at 750 degrees C, directly onto silicon substrates without any catalyst and fabricated into micromechanical membrane and beam structures. Using the buckling profile of the membrane and beam structures, we measure a built-in strain of -0.0142 and through wafer-bow measurement, a compressive stress of 436 MPa. From this we have calculated the Young's modulus of nanographite as 23.0 +/- 2.7 GPa. This represents a scalable method for fabricating nanographite MEMS and NEMS devices via a microfabrication-compatible process and provides useful mechanical properties to enable design of future devices. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.