Very high stresses arise in thin films and in nano-sized structures (lines, dots) because of the constraint of the substrate to which they are attached. The mechanical behavior of these small structures can deviate significantly from scaling laws developed for bulk materials. Moreover, the origins and magnitudes of these stresses are of great interest in technology as many fabrication and reliability problems are stress related.
X-ray diffraction is an ideal tool to measure non-destructively displacement fields at very local scales: thanks to x-ray synchrotron sources a 10 nm resolution may be achieved. Sub-micrometer x-ray beams are revolutionizing mechanics in small dimensions and it is now possible to perform micro-diffraction experiments while performing in situ mechanical testing. Another very promising approach relies on both real space and reciprocal space resolution. Coherent x-ray diffraction is highly sensitive to lattice distortions and may yield strain fields with a spatial resolution as small as 10 nm.

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