Elastic moduli from crystalline micro-mechanical oscillators carved by focused ion beam
The elastic moduli provide unique insights into the thermodynamics of quantum materials, particularly into the symmetries broken at their phase transition. Here, we present a workflow to carve crystalline resonators via focused ion beam milling from small and oddly shaped crystals unsuitable for traditional measurements of elasticity. The accuracy of this technique is first established in silicon. Next, we showcase the capacity to probe changes in the electronic state with a resolution on the measured resonance frequency as small as 0.01% on YNiO3, a rare-earth perovskite nickelate, in which bulk single crystals have typical length scales of ≈ 40 μ m . Here, we observe a sharp 0.2% discontinuity in Young’s modulus of an YNiO3 cantilever at a magnetic phase transition. Finally, an additional potential of using free-standing cantilevers as a tool for examining the time-dependence of chemical changes is illustrated by laser-heating YNiO3
2-s2.0-85197573141
38953722
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Max Planck for Chemical Physics of Solids
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Paul Scherrer Institut
Paul Scherrer Institut
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
2024-07-01
95
7
073905
REVIEWED
EPFL