Nanowires are an increasingly prevalent class of nanomaterials in composites and devices, with arrays and other complex geometries used in various applications. Little investigation has been done regarding the mechanical behavior of micron-sized nanowire structures. We conduct in situ microcompression experiments on vertically aligned dense microbundles of 300 nm diameter single-crystalline zinc oxide nanowires to gain insights into their structural failure. Experiments demonstrate that bundles containing approximately 10–130 nanowires experience two failure regimes: (1) localized noncatastrophic interfacial splitting and (2) global structural failure. Utilizing Weibull statistics and experimental results, we develop a technique for analyzing flaw distribution and use it to predict the expected range of bundle failure stress. This analysis provides guidelines for nanowire arrays’ susceptibility to failure, sensitivity to flaw size, interfacial interactions of constituents, and degree of alignment. This work develops insights to understand and predict fundamental failure mechanisms in highly aligned, dense structures.

中文翻译：

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垂直排列的密集纳米线阵列的失效机制

纳米线是复合材料和设备中越来越普遍的一类纳米材料，其阵列和其他复杂的几何形状用于各种应用。关于微米尺寸纳米线结构的机械行为的研究很少。我们对直径为 300 nm 的单晶氧化锌纳米线的垂直排列的致密微束进行原位微压缩实验，以深入了解它们的结构故障。实验表明，包含大约 10-130 根纳米线的束会经历两种失效状态：（1）局部非灾难性界面分裂和（2）全局结构失效。利用威布尔统计和实验结果，我们开发了一种分析缺陷分布的技术，并用它来预测束失效应力的预期范围。该分析为纳米线阵列对故障的敏感性、对缺陷尺寸的敏感性、成分的界面相互作用和对齐程度提供了指导。这项工作为理解和预测高度对齐的密集结构中的基本失效机制提供了见解。