Nanoindentation of vertical ZnO nanowires

We report the experimental observations of buckling instabilities of vertical well-aligned single-crystal ZnO nanowires prepared on ZnO:Ga/glass templates. It was found that critical buckling load and buckling energy of the ZnO nanowires were 215 μN and 3.69×10−11 J, respectively. It was also found that Young's modulus of the ZnO nanowires were 232 and 454 GPa while critical buckling strains were 0.35% and 0.18% when fixed–fixed column mode and fixed–pinned column mode were used, respectively.