Bending effects on lasing action of semiconductor nanowires.

High flexibility has been one of advantages for one-dimensional semiconductor nanowires (NWs) in wide application of nanoscale integrated circuits. We investigate the bending effects on lasing action of CdSe NWs. Threshold increases and differential efficiency decreases gradually when we decrease the bending radius step by step. Red shift and mode reduction in the output spectra are also observed. The bending loss of laser oscillation is considerably larger than that of photoluminescence (PL), and both show the exponential relationship with the bending radius. Diameter and mode dependent bending losses are investigated. Furthermore, the polarizations of output can be modulated linearly by bending the NWs into different angles continuously.