Suspended mechanical structures based on elastic silicon nanowire arrays.

We demonstrate a bottom-up/top-down combined method for the fabrication of horizontally suspended, well-oriented and size-controlled Si nanowire arrays. Mechanical beamlike structures composed of multiple ordered arrays consecutively linked by transversal microspacers are obtained by this method. Such structures are used to investigate the mechanical elasticity of the nanowire arrays by atomic force microscopy. Our results point out important differences in the morphology and mechanical behavior of the fabricated nanowire-based structures with respect to equivalent bulk material structures.