Abstract An on-chip fracture mechanics method is extended to characterize subcritical crack growth in submicron freestanding films. The relies on a self-actuated concept based MEMS fabrication principles. configuration consists of notched specimen attached actuator beams involving high internal stress. Upon release, initiates at the notch, propagates, and arrests. Several improvements are worke...

Market needs in the micro-electronics industry require the production of devices with increasing performance based on the continuous reduction of the characteristic dimensions of the main components. Therefore, in the last decade many efforts in the scientific community have focused on understanding how the material mechanical behavior changes at small scales, particularly at structural dimensi...

Freestanding and well-ordered two-dimensional (2D) silica monolayers with tetrahedral (T-silica) and octahedral (O-silica) building blocks are found to be stable by first-principles calculations. T-silica is formed by corner-sharing SiO4 tetrahedrons in a rectangular network, and O-silica consists of edge-sharing SiO6 octahedrons. Moreover, the insulating O-silica is the strongest silica monola...

Gold nanorods have great potential in a variety of applications because of their unique physical properties. In this article, we present the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of thin films containing positively charged gold nanorods that are covalently functionalized by cationic thiol molecules. The cationic gold nanorods are uniformly distributed in ultrathin nanocomposite LbL thin films. We studi...

STUDY OBJECTIVE We determine the number and location of freestanding emergency departments (EDs) across the United States and determine the population characteristics of areas where freestanding EDs are located. METHODS We conducted a systematic inventory of US freestanding EDs. For the 3 states with the highest number of freestanding EDs, we linked demographic, insurance, and health services...

Understanding the dynamic behavior of domain structures is critical to design and application super-elastic freestanding ferroelectric thin films. Phase-field simulations represent a powerful tool for observing, exploring revealing domain-switching phase transitions in materials at mesoscopic scale. This review summarizes recent theoretical progress regarding phase-field methods films novel buc...

Freestanding films with high strength and conductivity are critical for flexible electronics, such as supercapacitors. Herein, inspired from the natural leaf, a freestanding paper is constructed through fast vacuum filtration by “mesophylls-like” MXene (Ti3C2TX) nanosheets “vein-like” cellulose filaments silver nanowires (Ag NWs). The produced nanocomposite 25 wt% Ti3C2TX 8 Ag NWs (PMxAg25-8) e...

An electroplating spring-bridge micro-tensile specimen is fabricated to carry out a series of monotonic tensile testing on it. Freestanding thin films were loaded by performing monotonic loading/unloading and tensiontension fatigue experiments. Loading was applied using a piezoelectric actuator with 0.1 μm resolution connected through pin hole into the test chip specimen. Loads were measured by...

Spin-polarized gapless surface states in topological insulators form chiral Dirac cones. When such materials are reduced to thin films, the Dirac states on the two faces of the film can overlap and couple by quantum tunneling, resulting in a thickness-dependent insulating gap at the Dirac point. Calculations for a freestanding Sb film with a thickness of four atomic bilayers yield a gap of 36 m...