Elasticity and piezoelectricity of zinc oxide nanostructure

ZnO nanotubes have the potential to be used widely in variety of nano electromechanical devices. We calculate the elastic and piezoelectric properties of single wall ZnO nanotubes using molecular simulations. A Buckingham type interatomic potential has been used for numerical calculations. Prior to estimate the properties of tubular system, we have calculated the ZnO crystal of wurtzite structure and validated our results with other available results. The results are in good agreement with literature, using present computational approach. Finally, we studied the properties of ZnO nanotubes. Our results indicate that the elastic properties (e.g., the elements of the elastic tensor) of ZnO nanotubes decrease with the increase in tube diameter. The piezoelectric property of ZnO NTs is also found to be dependent on the tube diameter.