A simple method to characterize the electrical and mechanical properties of micro-fibers

A procedure to characterize the electrical and mechanical properties of micro-fibers is presented here. As the required equipment can be found in many teaching laboratories, it can be carried out by physics and mechanical/electrical engineering students. The electrical resistivity, mass density and Young's modulus of carbon micro-fibers have been determined using this procedure, obtaining values in very good agreement with the reference values. The Young's modulus has been obtained by measuring the resonance frequency of carbon fiber based cantilevers. In this way, one can avoid common approaches based on tensile or bending tests which are difficult to implement for microscale materials. Despite the simplicity of the experiments proposed here, they can be used to trigger in the students interest on the electrical and mechanical properties of microscale materials.