In situ ultrafine force measurement with nanowire based cantilevers in SEM

In nanomechanics the measurement of ultrafine forces becomes increasingly important for unravelling subtle details of elastic and plastic deformation processes. In particular, achieving high force resolution in combination with in situ imaging is a major challenge which is becoming exceedingly difficult with conventional methods. In this work, we introduce a novel systematic method to measure ultrafine forces using well-defined nanowires as cantilever beams in situ in the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Forces can be measured variably in the range from micro-newtons (mN) down to femto-newtons (fN), depending on the chosen reference nanowire. The reference wires are picked with a manipulator tip without the use of FIB (see Figure 1 a). Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract