Electrostatic potential in a bent flexoelectric semiconductive nanowire

Flexoelectricity presents a strong size effect, and should not be ignored for nanodevices. In this paper, the flexoelectric effect is taken into account to investigate the electrostatic potential distribution in a bent flexoelectric semiconductive nanowire, and the numerical solution is obtained by using the finite difference method. The effect of donor concentration on the electrostatic potential are also investigated. The results show that, the flexoelectricity increases the value of the voltage on the cross section. The flexoelectric effect is varied with the size, i.e. when the radius of the nanowire is small the flexoelectric effect is significant. It is also shown that a lower donor concentration can increase the value of the voltage on the cross section. The results indicated that one can use the flexoelectricity to modify the transfer efficiency from mechanical energy to electric energy through doping and strain engineering.