Out‐of‐Plane Polarization in Bent Graphene‐Like Zinc Oxide and Nanogenerator Applications

Highly efficient piezoelectric nanogenerator operation is demonstrated based on dynamic bending of graphene‐like ZnO nanosheets. Energy is harvested by an external resistor by virtue of a strong time‐varying piezoelectric polarization component perpendicular to the graphene‐like ZnO plane. It is shown analytically and verified numerically using molecular dynamics simulations that the $\overline{6}$m2 point group of flat graphene‐like ZnO is reduced to monoclinic m symmetry for bent graphene‐like ZnO. The latter symmetry allows for a nonzero and large piezoelectric polarization component perpendicular to the plane of the 2D structure. The numerical results confirm that flexoelectric effects are negligible subject to graphene‐like ZnO bending operation.