Shock-induced breaking of the nanowire with the dependence of crystallographic orientation and strain rate

The failure of the metallic nanowire has raised concerns due to its applied reliability in nanoelectromechanical system. In this article, the breaking failure is studied for the [100], [110], and [111] single-crystal copper nanowires at different strain rates. The statistical breaking position distributions of the nanowires have been investigated to give the effects of strain rate and crystallographic orientation on micro-atomic fluctuation in the symmetric stretching of the nanowires. When the strain rate is less than 0.26% ps(-1), macro-breaking position distributions exhibit the anisotropy of micro-atomic fluctuation. However, when the strain rate is larger than 3.54% ps(-1), the anisotropy is not obvious because of strong symmetric shocks.