Bending‐induced strain and curvature effects on semiconductor nanowire electronic eigenstates

The combined influence of strain and geometry bending is analyzed quasi‐analytically for nanostructures using differential geometry arguments. Appropriate general coordinates u1, u2, u3 are chosen with u1 along the nanowire centerline and u2, u3 locally spanning the nanowire cross section. This choice allows us to assume, for large aspect‐ratio nanotructures, that terms proportional to u2, u3 or higher powers including combinations of u2, u3 are negligible. This assumption has been justified for nanostructures where the nanostructure radius is up to 10% of the local radius‐of‐curvature according to previous works. We show that the influence of bending‐induced strains may lead to substantial electronic eigenstate and associated energy eigenvalue changes in the case of circular‐bent nanowires (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)