CURRENT TRENDS OF MICRO- AND NANOMECHANICS

Introduction
Scaling down to the micro- and nanoscale is a strong current trend in the development of science and
technology. ‘Small is energy efficient and cost effective’ has long been for the motto of the semiconductor
industry, including micro- and nanoelectronics, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nano-
electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). But shrinking to small scales brings big challenges to traditional
disciplines, including mechanics. Entering the micro- and especially nanoscale, matter shows distinctly
different behavior from the bulk, macroscopic case, ranging from mechanical to functional properties,
and from elastic deformation to yielding and failure behaviors. This special issue is organized by the
Micro- and Nanomechanics Workgroup of the Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics,
which was founded in 2008, to promote the multidisciplinary research at micro- and nano-scale on
mechanics of materials and devices. All the research papers and two review articles included in this
issue are invited contributions by the workgroup, from fifteen independent research groups in China
and related regions, reflecting the current research activities in the field.

Review Articles
As reviewed by Zheng and Qiao (page 511), the size dependence of the mechanical properties of
nanowires is coupled with applied electric field effects. In fact, external fields induce mechanical defor-
mation and even phase transitions in functional materials, such as piezoelectric, pyroelectric, electro-
and magnetostrictive, ferroelectric, ferromagnetic as well as the recently extensively studied multifer-
roic materials. The review article by Zheng et al. (page 524) provides a comprehensive understanding
of thermodynamic modeling of one class of nanomaterial: nanoscale ferroelectric systems. Based on
a Spontaneous-Polarization-Order-Parameter approach, some important properties of the nanoscale
ferroelectrics are calculated and analyzed. They also provide instructive discussions about the results.

Size effect
A fundamental challenge to applying solid mechanics to atomic systems is the definition of stress,
which is essentially a concept of continuum mechanics. For example, the Cauchy stress at a point of
matter is defined through average traction per unit area on area elements surrounding the point, as the
area becomes infinitesimally small. However, before reaching zero sizes, the systems become discrete
at the atomic level. Although several statistical methods have been proposed to extract the Cauchy
stress from the atomistic mechanics simulations, how to define the equivalent stress in both continuum
and discrete frames still remains controversial. Xu and Liu (page 644) checked the effectiveness of
three widely used stress concepts for atomic systems against selected atomistic simulation examples,
leading us to deeper thinking about this challenge, especially in multiscale modeling. Size effects on
elastic moduli and Poisson’s ratio become significant when the sample size decreases to the nanoscale,
but the elastic modulus can either decrease or increase with decreasing sample size. Tang et al. (page
605) provide a unified understanding of the two opposite trends by a one-dimensional model with
intermolecular potentials that simulate the relative density of the atomic lattice near the surface in
comparison with the bulk lattice: a looser surface atomic lattice leads to a decrease in elastic moduli
with decreasing sample size, while a tighter surface lattice leads to the reverse trend. Wang and Zhao
(page 630) probed this issue by a residual stress concept. A looser surface lattice can be modeled by
tensile surface stress, which will induce a compressive residual stress field in the interior of a nano-plate,
thus changing the size-dependent bending and self-buckling behaviors of the plate. Surface roughness,
as shown by Duan et al. on page 550, can also influence the elastic behavior of a micro-cantilever. In
fact, the roughness can be an equivalent expression of surface lattice change or surface stress. It is
demonstrated that surface roughness can enhance, reduce or even annul the effect of surface stress on
the resonance frequency of micro-cantilevers, depending on surface stress states, geometry of the rough
surface and Poisson’s ratio of the material. Based on molecular mechanics and the embedded-atom
potential, Zheng et al. (page 657) showed that the torsion coefficient of metallic copper nanospring

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increases with the increase of the wire radius as well as helix radius, and that the classic spring theory
is invalid to torsional nanosprings.
Nanoporous materials are an intriguing new member of the nanomaterial family, which used to consist
of zero-, one-, two-dimensional nanomaterials and nanograined bulk materials, or three-dimensional
nanomaterials. By molecular dynamics simulations, Zhao et al. (page 650) investigated not only the
stress-strain behavior, but also the incipient yielding of nanoporous single crystal copper under multiaxial
loading conditions. The yielding mechanism and surface are found to be stress-state and loading-path
dependent. When the material parameters are properly determined, powerful numerical methods, such
as the finite element method can be used for nanostructural analysis or optimization design. Zhu
et al. (page 665) performed design optimization on the process condition for grating fabrication of
nanostructures with hot embossing lithography, and the effectiveness of the design was checked against
experiments.
In comparison with modeling and simulating, mechanics tests at the nanoscale are much greater
challenges. In comparing with nanoindentation techniques, tensile experiment can provide direct mea-
surement of mechanical parameters of nanostructures, especially one-dimensional ones. But how to
realize strong clamping or gripping in nano-tensile-tests is always a tough task. Liu et al. (page 584)
studied two important kinds of clamping, based on electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID) and van
der Waals interaction respectively, in micro- and nanoscale experiments through combining theoretical
and experimental efforts. The influence of environment, material properties and sample size on the
clamping strengths was carefully discussed. Standardization of nanomechanics tests still has a long
way to go. In situ manipulating of one-dimensional nanostructures on substrates within SEM or high
resolution TEM by probe-tips and bending or vibrating suspended nanowires or nanotubes over micro
or nanoholes or grooves by probe-tips or applied external fields provide diversified routes to study the
mechanical properties and physical mechanical coupling effects.
The root of the size effect or surface effects should go beyond the stress, strain and geometry factors,
and should go down to the electron, even spin state levels. Nanostructures have much large surface ratio
over volume or weight, and atoms at free surfaces have dangling bonds which are chemically active and
have significant different density of states than in the interior of the structure. These surface states
will not only change the mechanical properties as shown by the mentioned articles, but also cause ex-
ceptional physical, chemical and biological properties of nanostructures, so that nanostructures can be
ultrasensitive chemical and biosensors, actuators, and ideal building blocks for functional nanodevices.
Even common materials can become highly ‘intelligent’ at nanoscale, such as carbon nanotubes and
graphene nanoribbons which will be introduced in the following. Therefore, to jointly and efficiently
use the continuum mechanics, molecular dynamics as well as quantum mechanics tools is necessary for
deeper understanding of the intriguing size effects of nanostructures and devices.

Mechanics of Carbon Nanotubes and Systems

In the past two decades, the most studied nanomaterials are undoubtedly the carbon nanostructures.
From the finding of fullerene balls at the middle of 1980s, high-resolution characterization of carbon
nanotubes at the beginning of 1990s, and successful manipulation of single carbon atomic layers or
graphene since 2004, the sp2 carbon nanostructures have brought us continuous surprises and created
important trends in nanoresearch , In addition, the fascinating, there has been much interest in nano-
diamonds (particles and films) and diamond-like-carbon structures which consist of both sp3 and sp2 (at
least on surfaces) C-C bonding structures. These carbon nanostructures are mechanically exceptional
and have fantastic functional properties: they can be metallic or semiconducting, spin magnetic even
half-metallic. Even the simplest hollow geometry of carbon nanotubes can provide plenty of potential
applications. For example, they can transport water very efficiently, producing electricity when fluid is
flowing through, outside or inside of them. Wang et al. (page 623) contributed a work on the dynamics
of carbon nanotubes containing water.
The most attractive aspect of carbon nanotubes may be their potential application in new generation
nanoelectronics. Nearly all the functions of silicon devices have been realized or demonstrated in
laboratory after more than a decade of great joint efforts from both academic and industry communities,
but how to control their chirality, which determines their device properties, still remains as a hard
challenge. Raman modes, from radial breathing, to D- and G-bands, have been shown theoretically and
experimentally to be capable to determine the chirality of a carbon nanotube. Although large amount of
theoretical studies on the Raman modes of carbon nanotubes have been conducted, analytical solutions

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for D- and G-bands are still lacking. Here, Li and Chang provide for the first time an explicit solution
for the G-band frequency of single walled carbon nanotubes (page 571).
In comparison, the single atomic layer of graphene has many intriguing properties due to its intrinsic
instable two-dimensional geometry and rich edge states, in addition to the Dirac point very near to its
Fermi level. It can be expected that this nanomaterial will bring our mechanics community another
exciting interdisciplinary field, although we have no invited article along this line in this issue.

Biomechanics and Molecular Bionics

Nature is always our best teacher. Particularly in the micro and nanoscale, biological systems are full
of secrets which provide us endless inspiration for creation. With fast developments in both nanotechnol-
ogy and molecular biology, our ability to probe the natural secrets and learn to mimic biosystems from
cell to functional proteins, from flying to walking on different surfaces by insects, and from seashells to
our bones, to produce bionic composites and create spider webs. Here, three articles are contributed to
understand the adhesion mechanism between gecko paws and wet surfaces (Su et al. on page 593), the
interaction of cardiac myocytes and elastic substrate (Huang et al. on page 563), and bionic principle
for fabricating nano-CaCO3 incorporated polystyrene composites (Gao et al. on page 555), respectively.
Su and colleagues start from a careful observing the tine tip of fiber of some insect paws and observed
concave tip morphology of the tine fiber to analyze how the concave tip can change the adhesion to a wet
surface and find in wonder that concave surface can effectively enhance the wet adhesion by reducing
the effective contact angle of the fiber. Huang et al. developed an experimental method to characterize
the spatial-temporal traction dynamics of single cardiac myocyte by high-resolution displacement field
of the elastic substrate on which the cardiac myocyte exposing to different microenvironments. Gao
et al. show experimentally that improvement in tensile modulus and creep resistance can be achieved
by adding nano-CaCO3 particles to the polystyrene matrix, but tensile strength and toughness are
decreased by adding the nanoparticles. In fact, to simutaneusly enhance the modulus, tensile strength
and fracture toughness of nanocomposites still remain an attractive and challenging topic.

Perspectives
Mechanics has been the fundamental of engineering technology for hundreds of years and traditional
mechanics is so well developed that it seems there the number of essential tasks left to professional
mechanics scientists at the macroscale are dwindling. However, the developing field of nanotechnology
brings plenty of new challenges and responsibilities to mechanics scientists, especially with the frontier
engineering technology shifting from mechanical engineering to intelligent nanosystems, from micro-
electronic engineering to nano and spin electronics and photonics, and the increasing pressure to find
alternative energy sources. Also, the life science and biological technology have developed to such a
depth, for example in the study of the dynamic functions of proteins with known atomic structures, that
mechanics scientist are being called on to join in the effort to achieve a more comprehensive understand-
ing of the secrets of bio and neural systems at an atomistic level. Entering the nano or molecular level,
strong coupling between the local fields of matter consisting of charge, electronic structures, orbital and
spin states and external applied fields such as mechanical strain and stress, electric and magnetic fields
and optical and phonon excitation, plays a dominant role and leads to great opportunities and also
challenges to our narrow knowledge basis provided by a specific discipline. Such nanoscale multifield
coupling softens the boundary between traditional disciplines, and interdisciplinary research become
essential. To our mechanics community, the developing nanotechnology call for a ‘big mechanics’ or
‘multimechanics’ formed by uniting traditional mechanics with quantum mechanics and raising the
discipline to a new level.

Guest Editors:
Wanlin Guo (Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing
210016, China. Email: [email protected])

Huiming Xie (AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084,
China. Email: [email protected])

Quanshui Zheng (Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084,

China. Email: [email protected])

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