Nanowires have significant potential in future technologies such as nanomechanical devices and electronics. Recent experiments suggest that nanowires with sub-100 nm diameters may be fabricated by filling cracks with various materials. The geometry of cracks becomes important on such a length scale, and the practical application of the approach requires an understanding of crack evolution in heterogeneous films. This paper proposes a level-set approach to model directed nanocracks on pre-patterned substrates. The approach does not require the explicit tracking of crack fronts and thus allows the simulation of complex crack patterns. Results indicate that pre-patterning a substrate can lead to various well controlled nanocrack patterns, suggesting a possibility to make designed and complex nanowires difficult to obtain with other methods.
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