In-Situ Mechanical Testing of Nano-Component in TEM

MEMS (Micro electro mechanical system) and NEMS (Nano electro mechanical system), which are composed of large number of submicronor nano-scale dissimilar components, often experience extrinsic loads due to operational and environmental conditions and these bring about local fracture. In order to make an accurate life prediction, the mechanical properties of components (e.g., deformation, fracture, and fatigue behaviour) have to be understood well. Especially, there are numerous uncertainties reported in the mechanical properties of micro-nano scale components, which are different from those of macroscopic one.


Introduction
MEMS (Micro electro mechanical system) and NEMS (Nano electro mechanical system), which are composed of large number of submicron-or nano-scale dissimilar components, often experience extrinsic loads due to operational and environmental conditions and these bring about local fracture. In order to make an accurate life prediction, the mechanical properties of components (e.g., deformation, fracture, and fatigue behaviour) have to be understood well. Especially, there are numerous uncertainties reported in the mechanical properties of micro-nano scale components, which are different from those of macroscopic one.
1. Smaller metals than a micrometer possess different plastic deformation properties from those of the bulk (Vinci et al., 1995;Xiang et al., 2006) because small volume components require a large driving force for dislocation generation and glide due to the dislocation source starvation (Greer & Nix, 2006;Hou et al., 2008;Liu et al., 2009) and the mirror force from free surfaces (J. Weertman & J. R Weertman, 1964). Furthermore, since the components in device are usually surrounded by dissimilar materials, the resulting deformation constraint affects the plastic behaviour as well. 2. Dissimilar interface is one of the most favorable potential crack initiation sites in a micro-and nano-scale component because it often has weak bonding (low resistance to fracture) and stress concentration (high driving force to fracture) due to the deformation mismatch between dissimilar materials (Bogy, 1968). In the component, the region governed by the stress concentration is confined in the nano-scale. In such case, the applicability of continuum mechanics to the crack initiation is questionable. 3. It is well known that irreversible cyclic deformation results in characteristic dislocation structures (vein, ladder-structure, and cell) in fatigue of bulk metals (Mughrabi, 1978;Thompson et al., 1956;Winter, 1978). In particular, the ladder and cell structures cause crack initiation owing to the strain localization because they are much softer than the matrix (Suresh, 1998). These fatigue substructures have a size in the scale of a few micrometers (Mughrabi, 1978). However, since the strain-concentrated region in nanocomponents is a few nanometers or at most a few tens of nanometers, typical fatigue substructure cannot form there.
Although we have to specify the mechanical properties of nano-component, the strength evaluation experiment of nano-component involves some major challenges in I.

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The Observation, II. Experimental set-up, III. Specimen fabrication, and IV. Specimen gripping and alignment. Consequently, we have to use special devices and methods described below for the investigation.

I. Observation
For observation of nano-components, electron microscopes (e.g., transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM)) are required because nano-components are invisible at optical wavelength. TEM is better in terms of image resolution while SEM possesses the depth of focus in the surface observation.

III. Specimen fabrication
Specimen is usually fabricated by means of wet-etching (Li et al., 2005;Namazu et al., 2002), dry-etching (Ryu et al., 2006 ;Tripathy et al., 2007), and focused ion beam (FIB) processing (Dimiduk et al., 2005;Motz et al., 2005). Wet-etching is often applied to single crystal Si, which is an important material in MEMS devices. Dry-etching and FIB processing are used for processing of multi-layered and composite materials.

IV. Specimen gripping and alignment
Although tensile testing is popular for evaluation of mechanical properties, it is difficult to apply it to nano-component because it requires precise alignment and reliable gripping (Haque & Saif, 2002;Huang & Spaepen, 2000;Tsuchiya et al., 1998). Especially, bending (Motz et al., 2005;Namazu et al., 2000) and compression (Dimiduk et al., 2005 ;Moser & Wasmer, 2007) methods are often adopted. Bending one has an advantage in terms of examination on the fracture behaviour.
In this chapter, we introduce bending experiment of nano-component in a TEM for in-situ observation. The material is composed of silicon (Si), copper (Cu), and silicon nitride (SiN), and the focus is on the deformation of nano-metal (Cu) and the fracture along the Si/Cu interface.  Table   www.intechopen.com 1), and the influence is included in the finite element method (FEM) stress analysis in the following sections.

Mechanical testing with in-situ
Residual stress [MPa] 20 nm-thick Cu film (Sumigawa et al., 2010a) 760 MPa 200 nm-thick Cu film 150 MPa 500 nm-thick SiN layer (Sumigawa et al., 2010a) -290 MPa   The specimen is carved out by means of focused ion beam (FIB) processing from a multilayer material, where Cu and SiN are deposited on a Si substrate by magnetron sputtering. The fabrication procedure of specimen is as follows.
1. A block with a size of about 10×10×10 μm 3 is carved out from the multilayer material. (Fig. 2(a)) 2. The block is picked up by a micro glass probe using electrostatic force. (Fig. 2(b)) 3. A gold (Au) wire with a flat top is prepared, and the block is mounted using an adhesive. (Fig. 2(c)) The output voltage of the FIB processing is kept at 30 kV, and the currents in the crude processing and in the surface finishing are 5-10 nA and 10 pA, respectively.
Figure 3(a) shows a schematic illustration of experimental set-up. It consists of a TEM (JEOL, JEM-2100), a specimen holder with a mechanical loading apparatus (Nanofactory Instruments AB, SA2000N), a piezo controller, and a digital camcorder. Figure 3(b) shows the loading apparatus, which consists of a stage which can move in three orthogonal directions and a conical diamond tip with a capacitance load sensor. The measurement range and accuracy of the load are 0-100 μN and ±0.1 μN, respectively.
An Au wire, which holds the specimen, is connected to the stage, and a load is applied by pressing the specimen onto the diamond tip. The applied load, P, is directly detected by means of the load sensor attached to the back of the tip. The displacement at the specimen end, , (See Fig. 1) is measured using a TEM with the loading device installed. TEM observation has the advantages of precise measurement of displacement and precise identification of exact locations of the interfaces and contact area of the loading tip. The observations are carried out with an accelerating voltage of 200 kV under a vacuum of 1.5×10 -5 Pa.

Research target and experimental detail
Although some researchers have clarified the plastic property of micron-thickness thin film by means of the indentation method (Dao et al., 2001;, it is extremely difficult to apply the method to nano-components because measurement error becomes large owing to the identification of exact tip shape and sample roughness. Thus, the target in this section is to investigate the plastic behaviour of nano-metal by using the bending experiment under the in-situ TEM observation. Figure 4 shows the bright-field TEM image of specimen. The cantilever arm is extended in order to magnify the deformation in Cu. The difference in transmission rates of the dissimilar materials enables us to recognize the location of dissimilar interfaces in the TEM micrograph. The target material to specify the plasticity is Cu with the dimension of 280 nm × 125 nm × 20 nm, which is sandwiched by Si and SiN. Figure 5 shows (a) bright-field TEM images before and during loading, (b) the relationship between the applied load, P, and the time, t, (P-t relationship), and (c) the relationship between P and the displacement at the cantilever tip (arm end of specimen), , (Prelationship). The loading point and the Cu film are clearly identified by the TEM, and the displacement at the arm end can be quantitatively measured from the images. The P-t relationship ( Fig. 5(b)) indicates smooth loading during the experiment. In Fig. 5(c), the displacement increases linearly with increasing load at low loading levels. The solid line in Fig. 5(c) shows the relation obtained by elastic FEM simulation, where all materials are assumed to be linear-elastic and the Young's modulus of the bulk material (E Cu = 129 GPa) is used for the Cu film. The good agreement with the experimental results at low loading levels indicates that the structure of the film has little effect on the Young's modulus. The Prelationship shows clear nonlinear behaviour beyond P = 3 μN, where the deviation greatly exceeds the measurement smallest limit (about 5 nm). Since the TEM image after the breaking points out that the Si and the SiN parts keep the original shape and size, they elastically deform during the loading. In short, the nonlinearity in the P-relationship is due to the plasticity of Cu film.

Inverse analysis
The Cu portion is too thin to measure the deformation quantitatively by the TEM image. Thus, the elasto-plastic constitutive equation of the Cu film is derived by inverse analysis using the P-relation and a three-dimensional FEM.
Using the Von Mises equivalent stress and strain, the deformation behaviour of the Cu film is described by where E, R, n, , and y are the Young's modulus, strength coefficient, strain hardening exponent, total effective strain, and yield stress, respectively. At the yield point, as we have R is given by the quantities E, y , and n. Since we can use the bulk elastic constants as shown in Fig. 5(c), the unknown parameters are only y and n.
The derivation procedure of y and n is as follows: www.intechopen.com 1. Arbitrary points (points A and B) are picked up in the non-linear portion of the loaddisplacement curve ( Fig. 6(a)). 2. The combination of y and n, which fulfills the displacement at the point A as measured by the experiment, is found using elasto-plastic FEM by trial-and-error ( Fig. 6(b)). Since two parameters cannot be determined at once from one experimental point, all sets of ( y , n), which satisfy the non-linear deformation at the point A, have a relationship schematically shown in Fig. 6(b) 3. By the same way, the combination of y and n at point B is derived through FEM ( For the accurate analysis, it is important to identify the exact shape of the specimen. The FEM model is prepared using commercial three-dimensional CAD (computer aided design) software. The model is divided into meshes as shown in Fig. 7, where the region near the interface has finer mesh. A perfect constraint condition is imposed on the left and bottom edges of the model, and the elastic constants in the analysis are summarized in Fig. 7.    If the mean grain diameter is assumed to be film thickness, the Hall-Petch relation of spattered Cu films (20 nm thickness) (Ruud et al., 1993) gives the yield stress of about 1 GPa.
Similarly, it gives about 250 MPa for the grain diameter of 200 nm. Although the yield stress obtained for the 20 nm-thickness film and the 200 nm-one has a slight deviation, they approximately follow the Hall-Petch relation.

Research target and experimental detail
At a dissimilar interface edge, stress is concentrated owing to the free-edge effect (Bogy, 1968). Although an interfacial crack may appear at the top interface edge in the cantilever specimen, the cracking criterion on the basis of continuum mechanics such as "critical stress" is questionable in a nano-component because only a few tens or a few hundreds www.intechopen.com The Transmission Electron Microscope 364 atoms exist in the stress concentrated region. The target in this section is to examine the dominant factor of crack initiation at the dissimilar interface edge in nano-components by using the bending experiment under the in-situ TEM observation. Figure 10(a) shows a TEM image of specimen for interfacial cracking experiment. Because the strength of interface between Si and Cu is weaker than that between Cu and SiN, the Si/Cu interface is broken preferentially. Figure 10(b) schematically illustrates the stress distribution along the Si/Cu interface in the specimen. A crack is initiated at the interface edge on the top surface. Three specimens (Specimen N1, N2, and N3) with different size are prepared in order to change the stress distribution along the Si/Cu interface. The size of specimens is summarized in Fig. 10(c).

Criterion of crack initiation
Figure 11 (a) shows the loading curve (P-t relationship) of Specimen N1. The load, P, monotonically increases up to a peak magnitude of 16.9 μN (point b) and then abruptly drops to 0 μN (point c). Figure 11(b) shows bright-field TEM images corresponding to the points a, b and c on the P-t curve. The crack is initiated at the point b at the top interface edge and instantly propagates along the interface. Detailed observation after the experiment demonstrates that no dissimilar material remained on either delaminated surfaces, confirming pure interface-cracking. Similar behaviour is observed in Specimens N2 and N3. Thus, the peak loads for interfacial crack initiation, P c , are critical, and Table 2 lists the magnitudes of P c . There are significant differences in P c among the specimens.
The stress in the specimen is analyzed by the FEM, in which an individual model is prepared for each experimental specimen. Figure 12( Figure 13 shows the distribution of normal and shear stresses, and , along the Si/Cu interface near the edge at the critical load P c . Although the stresses away from the edge in Specimens N1 to N4 differ from each other, they show fairly good agreement in the range of 20-30 nm near the edge. This indicates that crack initiation is governed by the concentrated stress. The high normal stress of about 1 GPa in a region of a few tens of nanometers near the interface edge, which is approximately three-times larger than that of the shear stress ( ≈ 300 MPa), governs the crack initiation.

Research target and experimental detail
Stress concentration does not always take place at the interface edge because of the complex shapes of nano-components. Because the edge has a peculiar atomic arrangement, the fracture resistance is expected to be different from the one of interface inside of the component. This suggests that interface crack initiation is dependent upon the location in the component. In this section, an experiment where a crack is initiated in the interior of the dissimilar interface is conducted, and the difference in the crack initiation criteria along the interface at the edge and in the interior is discussed.   Figure 14(b) schematically illustrates the stress distribution along Si/Cu interface in the specimen. While there is no stress concentration at the interface edge, the stress has the maximum in the central region of the Si/Cu interface. This suggests that an interfacial crack is initiated in the interior of the Si/Cu interface.

Criterion of crack initiation
Figure 15(a) shows the P-t relationship for Specimen S1. P monotonically increases up to P = 54.3 μN (point C), and it jumps from C to D. Then, the load begins to increases again before the sharp drop at the point E. Figure 15(b) shows sequential TEM micrographs corresponding to the points on the P-t curve. The interface is suddenly bent at the jump C-D, and a crack shown in the lower photo in Fig. 15 (b) appears at the location of r = 300 nm from the interface edge on the upper surface. Finally, the crack instantaneously propagates along the interface at point E (P = 57.9 μN).
Figure 16(a) shows the distributions of normal stress, , and shear stress, , at P = 54.3 μN along the Si/Cu interface, which are obtained by using an FEM model shown in Fig. 12(b). has a peak concentration at r ≈ 300 nm, which corresponds to the experimentally observed portion of crack initiation. Because at r ≈ 300 nm is much larger than that of , the former is the dominant factor in the crack initiation. Figure 16(b) shows a magnified view of thedistribution near r = 300 nm. The maximum stress is about 1.1 GPa, and the region of > 1 GPa extends about 60 nm.

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The Comparing the results shown in Figs. 13(a) and 16(b), crack initiation in the interior has the following characteristics: 1. The critical stresses in both cases are of almost the same magnitude, about 1 GPa. 2. The high-stress regions in both cases are several tens of nanometers in width, but the interior crack initiation requires a slightly wider region.
In short, there is little difference between the crack initiation criteria along the interface at the edge and in the interior.

Research target and experimental detail
Since typical fatigue substructures in a bulk metal, of which size is in the scale of a few micrometers (Mughrabi, 1978), cannot form in a nano-component. However, the fatigue of nano-component has not been clarified yet because of the experimental difficulty. The target in this section is to examine the fatigue behaviour of metal in a nano-component using the bending cantilever under the in-situ TEM observation.   Figure 17 shows (a) a bright-field TEM image of specimen and (b) its size. It should be noted that the stress concentration near the Si/Cu interface obtained by the FEM analysis points out the fatigue region is about 40 nm×20 nm×330 nm in the Cu film as schematically illustrated in Fig. 18.
The fatigue experiment is conducted under a constant load range, ΔP = P max -P min , with a load ratio of P min /P max = 0 (P min : minimum load, P max : maximum load). The initial load range is 8 μN, which is increased to 9 μN after 100 cycles. This process of fatigue (100 cycle) and load increase (1 or 1.5 μN) is repeated until the specimen breaks under ΔP = 18 μN (See Fig. 19). www.intechopen.com

Fatigue of 20 nm-thick Cu and cracking along Si/Cu interface
Figure 20(a) shows the load-displacement (P-) curves in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 99th cycles under the initial load range (ΔP = 8 μN). In the figure, the broken line shows the relation obtained from elastic FEM analysis. The linear and reversible behaviour in each cycle indicates that the specimen, including the Cu layer, elastically deforms under the cyclic loading. The fact that the P-curves experimentally obtained are in a good agreement with the analytical one indicates the sufficient accuracy in the control/measurement of load and displacement. The gradient of the P-curve does not change until the last cycle. The elastic deformation ensures the reliability of our system in fatigue, where long-term stability of the experimental system is essential.
Careful examination of the P-relation reveals that irreversible residual displacement, ', of about 10 nm is accumulated until the last cycle. Considering the measurement precision, this www.intechopen.com The Transmission Electron Microscope 370 signifies the accumulation of plastic strain in the specimen though the magnitude in each cycle cannot be individually identified. Figure 20(b) shows ' in the last cycle under each load range revealing that irreversible (plastic) strain accumulates with the progress of cyclic deformation. In particular, ' rapidly increases under ΔP = 18 μN. The specimen breaks in the 7th cycle under ΔP = 18 μN. Figure 21 shows (a) the load-time (P-t) relationship under ΔP = 18 μN and (b) bright-field TEM images corresponding to the alphabets in the P-t relationship. The specimen is cyclically loaded until the 6th cycle without any damage observed on the interface. In the 7th cycle, the load suddenly drops before the maximum load (17.0 μN; point C in Fig. 21(a)), and the specimen breaks along the Si/Cu interface. Since the load at C is about 6 % smaller than P max = 18 μN, it is clearly different from the fracture in a monotonic loading. The TEM images in Fig. 21(b) show that there is no remarkable damage in the Si/Cu interface before the break. Figure 22 shows the P-curves in each cycle. The nonlinear behaviour and distinct hysteresis loop indicate the cyclic plasticity of the Cu film because the Si substrate and the SiN layer elastically deforms at this load level. After the 2nd cycle, reverse yielding appears during the unloading process. These suggest the development of a cyclic substructure in the Cu film. As shown in Fig. 20(b), the residual displacement increases rapidly after the load range is increased to ΔP = 18 μN. The average in one cycle is 4.0 nm, which is more than one-order larger than that under ΔP = 17 μN. This drastic softening of the Cu film may also be due to the transition and development of the cyclic substructure. The width of the cyclic P-curve becomes narrower with increasing number of fatigue cycles. Figure 23 shows the half bandwidth of the cyclic loop, w 1/2 , with respect to the number of cycles. w 1/2 gradually decreases with the progress of cyclic deformation, and the magnitude in the 6th cycle is about half of that in the 1st cycle. This indicates cyclic hardening in the Cu film due to the transition of the substructure. www.intechopen.com

Research target
High-voltage TEM observation enables us to investigate the understructure at the nano-or atomic scale in materials. However, it is not convenient to handle and requires heavy economic load to the researches. If we can conduct the in-situ observation by a generalpurpose TEM, it is great help for the researcher to seek the understanding of precise mechanism in a nano-scale component. For the sake of in-situ observation by a generalpurpose TEM, the testing section must be thinned to about 100 nm. In order to observe the understructure of the specimen, a trial is discussed in this section.

Specimen and fabrication procedure
In bending test, the specimen buckles at the thin part under the compressive stress. In order to prevent the buckling at the lower part, the specimen with an inverted-T-shaped crosssection, where the neutral plane of bending deformation locates near the bottom, is adopted in order to confine the compressive stress to the thicker portion ( Fig. 24(a)). Moreover, by introducing a horizontal through-slit in the center of the thinned part, we can surely apply tensile stress in the experimental area ( Fig. 24(b); thin part). A block with high rigidity is added at the end of the cantilever for loading by a diamond tip. The final concept of the specimen configuration is schematically illustrated in Fig. 24(c).
The specimen is fabricated by means of a FIB processing. The fabrication procedure is described in detail below.
1. Gold (Au) with a thickness of 500 nm is deposited on the multi-layered plate (Si substrate/Cu (200 nm thickness)/SiN (500 nm thickness)) to protect the SiN layer from the ion beam. 2. A 10 μm×10 μm×10 μm block is carved out from the multi-layered plate, and is mounted on the flat top of an Au wire (wire diameter: 250 μm, and diameter of flat top: 100 μm) with an adhesive (Figs. 25(a)-(c)) so that the dissimilar interfaces (Si/Cu and Cu/SiN interfaces) are vertically aligned on the wire top ( Fig. 25(c)). 3. A part of the block is thinned to less than 1500 nm in the thickness by a z-direction beam (beam current: 50-1000 pA) ( Fig. 25(d)). 4. The thinned part is processed to about 500 nm in the thickness by a weak beam (beam current: 30 pA) (Fig. 25(e)). 5. After the horizontal through-slit is introduced in the specimen by a y-direction beam (beam current: 4 pA) (Fig. 25(f)-(i)), the thinned part is processed to less than 100 nm in the thickness by a z-direction beam (beam current: 4 pA). 6. The upper surface is finished from the x-direction (beam current: 4 pA) (Figs. 25(f)-(ii)), and the bottom is processed from the y-direction to complete the cantilever specimen ( Fig. 25(f)-(iii)). Fig. 25. Schematic illustration of the specimen preparation procedure.

Observation of plastic region
Figure 26(a) shows SEM images of fabricated specimen, in which the thickness of the thinned portion is about 75 nm. The block size at the cantilever end is 550 nm×310 nm×700 nm. Au at the specimen end is a protection layer for FIB processing. Figure 26(b) shows the configuration and size of the specimen without the Au passivation layer. Figure 27 shows a bright-field TEM image of the specimen. The magnified view in Fig. 27 shows no grain boundary near the Si/Cu interface edge though the Cu film is polycrystalline material. As the average diameter of grins is about 300 nm, the region near the edge is occupied by a single crystal. In general, elastic deformation and lattice distortion due to a dislocation brings about inhomogeneous contrast in a TEM image. Since there is no contrast difference observed near the Si/Cu interface edge in Fig. 27 before loading, the initial dislocation density is almost constant in this region.   Figure 28 shows the specimen model for the FEM analysis, which is precisely reconstructed following the actual specimen shape. Although microscopic structures such as grains would affect the deformation of the Cu and SiN, isotropic homogeneity is assumed because the focus is on an approximate evaluation of the stress distribution here. Figure 29 shows a distribution of the normal stress σ x along the Si/Cu interface near the upper edge. The stress is normalized by a reference stress ' which is x at the center of the www.intechopen.com upper surface in the Cu film (indicated by an × in Fig. 28). There is no compressive stress in the test area, and tensile stress prevails as designed. The stress concentrates within about several tens of nm from the interface edge because of the deformation mismatch between the Cu film and the Si substrate.  www.intechopen.com The Transmission Electron Microscope 376 Figure 30 shows the load-time relationship obtained from the bending experiment. After the load P linearly increases, it suddenly drops at P = 101.7 μN. Figure 31 shows a series of TEM images during the experiment. These indicate that the loading tip firmly touches the block at the cantilever end without slip at the contact. The specimen breaks along the Si/Cu interface when the load reaches P = 101.7 μN. No buckling takes place in the specimen before breaking.
The dark area indicated by a dashed circle in Fig. 31 (B) appears near the interface edge in the Cu film at about P = 20 μN. The area gradually expands as the load increases (See Fig.  (C)). The location corresponds to the stress-concentration region predicted by FEM analysis (See Fig. 29). If the shadow is caused by a local elastic deformation, the boundary of dark area is vague due to the stress distribution. However, the shadow in the images has a clear boundary. These indicate that the area is caused by plastic deformation. The shadowed area expands along the upper surface of the specimen with increasing the applied load. The plastic region near the Si/Cu interface edge is determined by image processing, and Fig. 33 shows the change in the area. A definite plastic region appears at P = 20 μN and reaches about 920 nm 2 at P = 80 μN.

Conclusion
This chapter highlights bending experiments on the strength of nano-scale interface with insitu TEM observation. Cantilever specimens are carved out of a multi-layered material where a 20 nm-thick Cu film is sandwiched between a SiN layer and a Si substrate by means of the FIB processing. The results are summarized as follows.
• TEM image enables us to quantitatively measure the displacement at the arm end of specimen during the bending experiment.

•
The elastic-plastic constitutive equation of the Cu portion can be estimated by an inverse analysis using the load-displacement relationship.

•
Crack initiation at Si/Cu interface edge under monotonic loading is governed by the normal stress of about 1 GPa in a region of 20 -30 nm. • A Specimen with a step in the SiN portion induces a crack initiation at the interior Si/Cu interface owing to the stress concentration. There is little difference between the crack initiation criteria along the interface at the edge and in the interior.

•
Under cyclic loading, the Cu portion evidently shows fatigue behaviour, and then, the specimen breaks along the Si/Cu interface by the fatigue.

•
Cantilever specimen with an inverted-T-shaped cross-section, a through-slit in the thinned part, and a rigid block at the arm end is designed for the in-situ observation inside of nano-component. It enables us to conduct a bending experiment with in-situ transmission observation, which can observe the plastic zone in the Cu portion.
The mechanical properties in nano-components are described in detail in a book "Fracture nanomechanics" (Kitamura et al., 2011).
There are further challenging topics on the mechanical behaviour of nano-component remained. For example, although the Section 3.2 demonstrates that continuum mechanics is still valid in the range of 20-30 nm and the stress concentration can describe fracture characteristics, the applicability in smaller regions is unclear. Moreover, the mechanism of plasticity and the cyclic substructure in nano-component are not clarified. Since the ratio of the surface to the volume in nano-components is remarkably large, the mechanical properties are strongly affected by corrosion and surface diffusion. Consequently, the deformation and fracture behaviour under an environment and a high-temperature is of great interest. The technique described in this chapter may greatly contribute to future research on the mechanical property of nano-components.