Thermopiezoelectric and Nonlinear Electromechanical Effects in Quantum Dots and Nanowires

Patil, S., Bahrami-Samani, M., Melnik, R., Toropova, M., Zu, J.

Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors, Rio de Janeiro, 2008, Physics of Semiconductors: 29th International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors, American Institute of Physics (AIP Conference Proceedings), Volume 1199, pp. 327-328, 2010

Abstract:

We report thermopiezoelectric (TPE) and nonlinear electromechanical (NEM) effects in quantum dots (QD) and nanowires (NW) analyzed with a model based on coupled thermal, electric and mechanical balance equations. Several representative examples of low dimensional semiconductor structures (LDSNs) are studied. We focus mainly on GaN/AlN QDs and CdTe/ZnTe NWs which we analyze for different geometries. GaN/AlN nano systems are observed to be more sensitive to thermopiezoelectric effects than those of CdTe/ZnTe. Furthermore, noticeable qualitative and quantitative variations in electromechanical fields are observed as a consequence of taking into account NEM effects, in particular in GaN/AlN QDs.

Keywords: quantum dots, nanowires, coupled thermo-electromechanical effects, nonlinearities