Recent advances with respect to the authors’ detailed studies of numerous inorganic nanomaterials using various in situ TEM holders will be presented [1]. Bending and tensile strength, Young’s modulus and fracture toughness of diverse nanotubes, nanowires and nanosheets and their peculiar deformation kinetics will be highlighted. Ultimate increase in the nanostructure temperature, up to ~2000oC or more, using resistive heating within the in situ holders has allowed us to shed a new light onto temperature gradients, intra-diffusion and metal amorphization/crystallization kinetics in the nanospace [2]. Peeling of individual dichalcogenide atomic layers (thus modeling most famous “Scotch-tape” technique of graphene-like nanosheets’ isolation) was for the first time accomplished inside a high-resolution TEM under a full control of energetics and stress-strain field distribution [3]. Pioneering in situ TEM optoelectronic and photovoltaic tests on TiO2 nanoparticles, ZnO nanowires, CdS nanobelts, MoS2nanosheets and variously fabricated nanomaterial heterojunctions have led to clear understanding of the real technological prospects for the advanced optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications. The authors are particularly grateful to many colleagues, namely, Drs. Zhi Xu, Mingsheng Wang, Xianlong Wei, Pedro Costa, Naoyuki Kawamoto, Masanori Mitome, and Yoshio Bando for their important contributions to the regarded experiments at different stages of the in-situ TEM Project accomplishment within NIMS over the last decade.
[1] Golberg D. et al. Adv. Mater. 24, 177 (2012).
[2] Tang D.M., Golberg D. et al. Nano Lett.15, 4922 (2015).
[3] Tang D.M., Golberg D. et al. Nature Commun. 5, 3631 (2014).