Nanomechanics

Our mechanical measurements have shown for the first time that MoS2 has a high in-plane stifness, comparable to that of stainless steel and that it can withstand high degrees of mechanical deformation, with strain at breaking of up to 11%. This gives the possibility of using strain to modulate the electronic properties of MoS2 and other TMDCs and could result in nanoscale strain gauges.

Representative key papers from our group

  1. Bertolazzi, S., J. Brivio, A. Kis. Stretching and Breaking of Ultrathin MoS2.
    ACS Nano 5, 9703–9709 (2011); DOI:10.1021/nn203879f.

  2. Manzeli, S., A. Allain, A. Ghadimi, A. Kis. Piezoresistivity and Strain-Induced Band Gap Tuning in Atomically Thin MoS2.
    Nano Letters 15, 5330–5335 (2015); DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01689.

  3. Benameur, M. M., F. Gargiulo, S. Manzeli, G. Autès, M. Tosun, O. V. Yazyev, A. Kis. Electromechanical Oscillations in Bilayer Graphene
    Nature Communications 6, 8582 (2015); DOI:10.1038/ncomms9582.