A dragonfly wing consists of membranes and both longitudinal and cross veins.We observed the microstructure cross-section at several locations in the dragonfly wing using environmental scanning electron microscopy(ESEM).The organic nature of the junction between the vein and the membrane was clearly identifiable.The membrane was divided into two layers,the upper epidermis and the lower epidermis.These layers extend around the sandwich structure vein,and combine with the adjacent membrane at a symmetrical location along the vein.Thus,we defined this as an organic junction between the vein and the membranes. The organic junction is able to form a tight corrugation angle,which dramatically increases both the warping rigidity and the strength of the wing,but not the torsional rigidity.The torsional deformation is primarily controlled by the microstructure of the longitudinal veins,and is based on the relative rotation angle between the epidermal layer and the inner layer of the vein that forms the zigzag section.
The failure of thin film-substrate structure occurs mainly at the thin film or the interface. However, the characterizing and estimating methods of failure stress in thin film are neither uniform nor effective because there are some complex effects of such as size, interface and stress state on the failure behavior of thin film-substrate structure. Based on the scanning electron microscope (SEM) in-situ in- vestigation on the failure models of the Cu thin film-substrate structure and the nano scratched testing results, the failure stresses in different thicknesses of the Cu film-substrate were characterized, which were compared and confirmed by other methods, such as Stoney formula and other empiric equations. These results indicate that the novel estimating method of failure stress in thin film based on the critical wavelength of surface unstable analysis is better than other methods. The main reason is that the novel estimating method of failure stress in meso thickness film fully considered the effect factors of free surface unstable behavior and elastic anisotropy of thin film. Therefore, the novel estimating method of failure stress assists people to understand the critical interfacial strength and to set up the failure criterion of thin film-substrate structure.
