Characterizing the physical properties of individual nanostructures is rather challenging because of the difficulty in manipulating the objects of sizes from nanometer to micrometer. Most of the nanomeasurements have been carried using STM and AFM. In this presentation, we demonstrate that transmission electron microscopy can be a powerful tool for quantitative measurements the mechanical, electrical and thermodynamic properties of a single nanostructure, such as a carbon nanotube or a nanoparticle.

Using a customer-built specimen holder, in-situ measurements on the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes has been carried out using the resonance phenomenon induced by an externally applied alternating voltage [1]. If an oscillating voltage is applied on the nanotube with tunable frequency, resonance can be induced (Fig. 1). The bending modulus is calculated from the resonance frequency. The bending modulus is as high as 1.2 TPa (as strong as diamond) for nanotubes with diameters smaller than 8 nm, and it drops to as low as 0.2 TPa for those with diameters larger than 30 nm.