In-situ nanoscale single fiber fragmentation using fluorescence microscopy

We use fluorescence microscopy to perform real time single fiber fragmentation experiments on individual PolyFurfuryl Alcohol (PFA) nanofibers embedded within a Poly DiMethyl Siloxane (PDMS) matrix. By using fluorescent nanofibers in an optically transparent matrix, fragmentation of the nanoscale fibers (even less than 400 nm) can also be easily visualized using fluorescence emission from the nanowires. When the composite specimen was loaded to saturation strain the fragment lengths distribution was observed to follow a two parameter Weibull frequency distribution. In addition, we also present a digital image correlation based technique to obtain localized strain (and hence stress) data based on the use of fluorescent nanoscale spatial markers.