Design of a bent beam electrothermal actuator for in situ tensile testing of ceramic nanostructures

A necessary condition to include nanoscale materials in the design of high-performing as well as reliable electrical and electromechanical devices is the availability of a sufficiently deep knowledge of their mechanical behavior. Up to date, the most powerful tools for mechanical characterization of nanosamples are properly designed microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), due to their compatibility with scanning/transmission electron microscopy (SEM/TEM) and high resolution force/displacement measurements. Herein, we report about the design of a MEMS platform for in situ SEM tensile testing of nanoscale samples. This is characterized by a very compact structure, based only on a bent beam electrothermal actuator, which performs both actuating and sensing functions. The size of the structural components of the present device is chosen with the aim of testing ceramic nanowires, but the resulting configuration can be applied also for other material samples.