Effect of Surface Elasticity on the Piezoelectric Potential of a Bent ZnO Nanowire

Abstract

The influence of surface elasticity on the piezoelectric potential distribution of a deformed ZnO nanowire is investigated by the effective Young's modulus based upon elastic and piezoelectric theory. When the nanowire in radius 25 nm subjects to an lateral applied force 5 nN, the maximum piezoelectric potential of the nanowire we derived is about 13.8 mV, which approaches much more closely to the experiment measurement value (∼10 mV) [Z. L. Wang and J. H. Song: Science 312 (2006) 242]. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of maximum piezoelectric potential between the cases with and without the effect of surface elasticity is analyzed. The results show that the values of piezoelectric potential generated in ZnO nanowires are decreased due to the surface stiffening. From the theoretical analysis, the effect of surface elasticity has a significant impact on the piezoelectric potential for a bent ZnO nanowire, actually it reduces the gap between theoretical estimation and experiment measurements.