Mechanical characterization of hotplate synthesized vanadium oxide nanobelts

Vanadium oxide nanobelts have been synthesized on Si or SiN substrates by simply heating vanadium foils on a hotplate. As-grown nanobelts were characterized as V 2 O 5 · n H 2 O (0.3 n 2 O 5 phase and a polycrystalline structure was observed. The Young’s modulus of the annealed nanobelts showed more consistent values at an average of 28.9 GPa, lower than the calculated modulus of bulk α-V 2 O 5 at 68 GPa.