The mechanical behavior of single polymer and carbon nanofibers is being measured with MEMS based tools as a function of fabrication conditions and loading rates. The figure below shows the relative dimensions of electrospun polymeric nanofibers tested by our methods in comparison to a human hair

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RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

1. M. Naraghi, I. Chasiotis, Y. Dzenis, Y. Wen, H. Kahn, “Novel Method for Mechanical Characterization of Polymeric Nanofibers”, Review of Scientific Instruments 78, pp. 085108, (2007).
    
2. M. Naraghi, I. Chasiotis, Y. Dzenis, Y. Wen, H. Kahn, “Mechanical deformation and failure of electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofibers as a function of strain rate”, Applied Physics Letters 91, pp. 151901, (2007).

Engineering stress-strain curves of 200-600 nm PAN nanofibers at three strain rates. The curly brackets group the plots according to the applied strain rate.

College of Engineering   University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign