Measurement of Young’s modulus of GaAs nanowires growing obliquely on a substrate

A convenient and fast method for measuring Young’s modulus of semiconductor nanowires obliquely standing on the growth substrate is presented. In this method, the nanowire is elastically bent under the force exerted by the probe of an atomic-force microscope, and the load-unload dependences for the bending of the probe cantilever are recorded. Next, these curves are used to find the bending stiffness of the tilted nanowires, after which, taking into account the nanowire dimensions, Young’s modulus is obtained. The implementation of this method is demonstrated for tilted GaAs nanowires growing on a GaAs (111) substrate. Young’s modulus is determined by applying finite-element analysis to the problem of the stationary elastic bending of a nanowire taking into account the actual nanowire shape and faceting. It proves that a fairly accurate estimate of Young’s modulus can be obtained even if the nanowire shape is approximated by a circular cylinder with a single cross-sectional area. The values of Young’s modulus obtained for GaAs nanowires of cubic lattice symmetry are 2 to 3 times smaller than its value for bulk GaAs. This difference is attributed to the presence of stacking faults in the central part of the nanowires.