Mechanical breakdown of bent silicon nanowires imaged by coherent x-ray diffraction

Abstract

We have developed a method of coherent x-ray diffractive imaging to surmount its inability to image the structure of strongly strained crystals. We used calculated models from finite-element analysis to guide an iterative algorithm to fit experimental data from a series of increasingly bent wires cut into silicon-on-insulator films. Just before mechanical fracture, the wires were found to contain new phase structures, which are identified as dislocations associated with crossing the elastic limit. © IOP Publishing and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.