Lateral bending of tapered piezo-semiconductive nanostructures for ultra-sensitive mechanical force to voltage conversion

Quasi-1D piezoelectric nanostructures may offer unprecedented sensitivity for transducing minuscule input mechanical forces into high output voltages due to both scaling laws and increased piezoelectric coefficients. However, until now both theoretical and experimental studies have suggested that, for a given mechanical force, lateral bending of piezoelectric nanowires results in lower output electric potentials than vertical compression. Here we demonstrate that this result only applies to nanostructures with constant cross-section. Moreover, though it is commonly believed that the output electric potential of a strained piezo-semiconductive device can only be reduced by the presence of free charges, we show that the output piezopotential of laterally bent tapered nanostructures, with typical doping levels and very small input forces, can be even increased up to two times by free charges. Our results confirm that lateral bending is likely not optimal for piezoelectric energy harvesting, but also suggest that lateral bending of tapered nanostructures with typical doping levels can be ideal for transducing tiny input mechanical forces into high and accessible piezopotentials. Our results provide guidelines for designing high performance piezo-nano-devices for energy harvesting, mechanical sensing, piezotronics, piezo-phototronics, piezo-controlled chemical reactions, and more.