Effect of cross-sectional geometry on superelasticity of helical nanobelts

The shape memory effect (SME) and the superelasticity make nanoscale chiral structures such as helical ZnO nanobelts promising for a wide range of important applications. In this paper, based on the non-linear rod model with surface effect (Wang et al, 2011), the effects of surfaces and geometrical size of the cross-section on the superelasticity of the helical nanobelts have been investigated quantitatively. Our results demonstrate the superelasticity of helical nanobelts exhibit a distinct size effect, depending on the cross-sectional geometry. We also show the efficiency of the energy storage and retrieval of the helical nanobelts induced by the superelasticity depends strongly on the cross-sectional geometry.