Tensile strained germanium nanowires measured by photocurrent spectroscopy and X-ray microdiffraction.

Applying tensile strain in a single germanium crystal is a very promising way to tune its bandstructure and turn it into a direct band gap semiconductor. In this work, we stress vapor-liquid-solid grown germanium nanowires along their [111] axis thanks to the strain tranfer from a silicon nitride thin film by a microfabrication process. We measure the Γ-LH direct band gap transition by photocurrent spectrometry and quantify associated strain by X-ray Laue microdiffraction on beamline BM32 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. Nanowires exhibit up to 1.48% strain and an absorption threshold down to 0.73 eV, which is in good agreement with theoretical computations for the Γ-LH transition, showing that the nanowire geometry is an efficient way of applying tensile uniaxial stress along the [111] axis of a germanium crystal.