Nano-mechanical properties of ZnO piezoelectric semiconductor nanowires

Piezoelectric semiconductor nanowires (NWs) have been researched as the building blocks for various energy transducing applications. The electromechanical interaction, also known as piezoelectricity, couples the mechanical and the electrical state in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry, i.e., the application of mechanical strain results in the generation of electrical charge and vice versa. On the other hand, nanostructures were demonstrated to exhibit yield strengths reaching the ultimate limit for the respective material, hence allowing large elastic deformations. The extended mechanical deformation range makes terms of higher orders, and thus non-linearities, play a major role in the mechanical and piezoelectric behavior of nanomaterials. This proposal focuses on the linear and non-linear nano- mechanical properties of ZnO nanowires investigated by in-situ three-point bending tests in cimbination with Laue microdiffraction