Abstract
Sub-micron scale nanocrystalline rhodium pillars were fabricated by electron beam lithography and electroplating techniques. The fabricated specimens included solid core pillars and columnar structure with more complex cross-sectional geometries, including x-shaped and annulus shaped. Among these specimens, two groups of sub-micron scale annulus structures with sidewall thicknesses of 250 and 205 nm were fabricated. All of the structures have outer diameters of ~1 μm and consist of average grain size smaller than 22 nm. Uniaxial compression results reveal these rhodium pillars are very strong with true flow stresses exceeding 5 GPa and are not sensitive to the sample cross-sectional geometries.
Acknowledgements
T.Y. Tsui thanks Canadian NSERC Discovery, NSERC Research Tools and Instruments and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for the support of this research. The authors gratefully acknowledge critical support and infrastructure provided for this work by the Emerging Communications Technology Institute at the University of Toronto. The transmission electron microscopy analysis described in this paper was performed at the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy (CCEM), which is operated by the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research of McMaster University. The CCEM is supported by NSERC and other government agencies.