Yifan Rao's blog

Dear friends, I want to share our recent work on the effects of adhesive and frictional contacts on the drumhead nanoindentation. Nanoindentation of suspended circular thin films, dubbed drumhead nanoindentation, is a widely adopted technique for characterizing the mechanical properties of micro- or nano-membranes, including atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials. This method involves suspending an ultrathin specimen over a circular microhole and applying a precise indenting force at the center using an atomic force microscope (AFM) probe.

Dear friends, I want to share our recent work on the shape characteristics of 2D crystal blisters. Micro- and nano-sized blisters can form spontaneously when two-dimensional (2D) crystals are transferred onto substrates because liquid molecules that are initially adsorbed on 2D material and substrate surfaces can be squeezed and trapped by interfacial forces. On the one hand, blisters are undesirable in 2D material devices as they impede charge/photon/phonon transport across the interface, so various means were developed to eliminate interfacial blisters. On the other hand, m

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