Strain Effects on Optoelectronic Characteristics of Laterally Arrayed Silicon Nanowires on a Flexible Substrate

Abstract

In this study, we array n-type silicon nanowires (SiNWs) on a flexible plastic substrate and investigate the effects of tensile strain on the optoelectronic characteristics of the laterally arrayed SiNWs under the illumination of 633-nm-wavelength light in air at room temperature. The unstrained SiNW array has an efficiency of approximately 5.3 mu A/W at a bias voltage of 5 V. When the plastic substrate suffers from a tensile strain of up to 2.2% in parallel to the channels of SiNWs, dark current and photocurrent increase markedly owing to the change in their band structure caused by the tensile strain. (c) 2011 The Japan Society of Applied Physics