Orientation effect on the giant stress field induced in a single Ni nanowire by mechanical strain

The change of magnetization (i.e. using the inverse magnetostriction effect) allows to investigate at the nanoscale the effects of thermoelastic and piezoelectric strain of an active track-etched ß-PVDF polymer matrix on an electrodeposited single-contacted Ni nanowire (NW). The magnetization state is measured locally by anisotropic magnetoresitance (AMR). The ferromagnetic NW plays thus the role of a mechanical probe that allows the effects of mechanical strain to be characterized and described qualitatively and quantitatively. Due to the inverse magnetostriction, a quasidisappearance of the AMR signal for a variation of the order of T ∼ 10 K has been evidenced. The coplanarity of the vectors between the magnetization and the magnetic field is broken. A way of studying the effect of the geometry on such a system, is to fabricate oriented polymer templates. Track-etched polymer membranes were thus irradiated at various angles (airrad) leading, after electrodeposition, to embedded Ni NWs of different orientations. With cylindrical Ni NW oriented normally to the template surface, the induced stress field in a single Ni NW was found 1000 time higher than the bulk stress field (due to thermal expansion measured on the PVDF). This amplification results in three nanoscopic effects: (1) a stress mismatch between the Ni NW and the membrane, (2) a non-negligible role of the surface tension on Ni NW Young modulus, and (3) the possibility of non-linear stress-strain law. When the Ni NWs are tilted from the polymer template surface normality, the induced stress field is reduced and the amplification phenomenon is less important.