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A prestressed rectangular film clamped at both ends delaminates from a rigid punch. Based on a thermodynamic energy balance, the delamination mechanics is derived to relate the simultaneous external tensile force applied to the punch, punch displacement, and contact area. Effects of the coupled tensile residual membrane stress and adhesion energy at the punch-film interface are investigated. A “pinch off” (stable shrinking of the contact area to a line) is predicted, contrasting the nonzero “pull-off” radius in a clamped circular film. The model is useful in understanding the behavior of various adhesion-delamination phenomena, especially in one dimensional capacitive microelectromechanical systems radio frequency switches, microstructure network, and nanostructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nano-cheese-cutter is fabricated to directly measure the adhesion between two freestanding nano-fibers. A single electrospun fiber is attached to the free end of an atomic force microscope cantilever, while a similar fiber is similarly prepared on a mica substrate in an orthogonal direction. External load is applied to deform the two fibers into complementary V-shapes, and the force measurement allows the elastic modulus to be determined. At a critical tensile load, 'pull-off' occurs when the adhering fibers spontaneously detach from each other, yielding the interfacial adhesion energy. Loading-unloading cycles are performed to investigate repeated adhesion-detachment and surface degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a technique to characterize adhesion of monolayered/multilayered graphene sheets on silicon wafer. Nanoparticles trapped at graphene-silicon interface act as point wedges to support axisymmetric blisters. Local adhesion strength is found by measuring the particle height and blister radius using a scanning electron microscope. Adhesion energy of the typical graphene-silicon interface is measured to be 151±28 mJ/m2. The proposed method and our measurements provide insights in fabrication and reliability of microelectromechanical/nanoelectromechanical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]