LAUSR

Abstract We investigate the strain manipulation of photocurrent induced by a linearly-polarized light in a phosphorene-based two-terminal system. A local out-of-plane gate voltage is applied to break the inversion symmetry of pristine phosphorene. The photocurrent under zero source-drain bias is calculated by the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism combined with density-functional theory. The photocurrent in the strain-free system is highly anisotropic and depends on the applied region of the gate voltage. Under a small tensile strain with strength ≈ 2 % , the photoresponse for lights in the whole visible range is suppressed greatly. The photocurrent along the zigzag direction decay quickly with the strain strength. In contrast, the photocurrent along the armchair direction can be enhanced by a moderate strain strength ≈ 8 % in some region of photon energy.