Ambient energy harvesting using piezoelectric nanomaterials is today considered as a promising way to supply microelectronic devices. Since the first demonstration of electrical energy generation from piezoelectric semiconductor nanowires in 2006, the piezoelectric response of 1D-nanostructures and the development of nanowirebased piezogenerators have become a hot topic in nanoscience. After se...

Light emission from semiconductors depends not only on the efficiency of carrier injection and recombination but also extraction efficiency. For ultraviolet emission from high band gap materials such as ZnO, nanowires have higher extraction efficiencies than thin films, but conventional approaches for creating a p-n diode result in low efficiency. We exploited the noncentral symmetric nature of...

Piezoelectric energy conversion that generate electric energy from ambient mechanical and vibrational movements is promising energy harvesting technology because it can use more accessible energy resources than other renewable natural energy. In particular, flexible and stretchable piezoelectric energy harvesters which can harvest the tiny biomechanical motions inside human body into electricit...

The desire for completely self-powered electronics has led to a continuously increasing amount of related research over the last decade. [ 1 ] Along with the dramatic advances in nanotechnology and low power consumption electronics, wireless and maintenance-free multifunctional nanodevices that can be used anywhere at any time have attracted much attention. [ 2–4 ] However, these devices requir...

Patterning of nanowires in a controllable, tunable manner is important for the fabrication of functional nanodevices. Here we present a simple approach for tunable nanowire patterning using standing surface acoustic waves (SSAW). This technique allows for the construction of large-scale nanowire arrays with well-controlled patterning geometry and spacing within 5 s. In this approach, SSAWs were...

We demonstrated the first piezoelectric effect on the performance of a pH sensor using an MSM back-to-back Schottky contacted ZnO micro/nanowire device. When the device is subjected to an external strain, a piezopotential is created in the micro/nanowire, which tunes the effective heights of the Schottky barriers at the local contacts, consequently increasing the sensitivity and signal level of...

The harvesting of mechanical energy from ambient sources could power electrical devices without the need for batteries. However, although the efficiency and durability of harvesting materials such as piezoelectric nanowires have steadily improved, the voltage and power produced by a single nanowire are insufficient for real devices. The integration of large numbers of nanowire energy harvesters...

We report an approach for growing aligned ZnO nanowire arrays with a high degree control over size, orientation, dimensionality, uniformity, and possibly shape. Our method combines e-beam lithography and a low temperature hydrothermal method to achieve patterned and aligned growth of ZnO NWs at <100degreesC on general inorganic substrates, such as Si and GaN, without using catalyst. This approa...

Over the past two decades, quick development of wireless sensor networks has required nodes being self-powered. Pushed by this goal, in work, we demonstrated a ZnO nanowire-array-based piezoelectric nanogenerator (NG) prototype, which can convert mechanical energy into electricity. High-quality single crystalline nanowires, having an aspect ratio about 15, grown on gold-coated silicon substrate...

In a flexible nanocomposite-based nanogenerator, in which piezoelectric nanostructures are mixed with polymers, important parameters to increase the output power include using long nanowires with high piezoelectricity and decreasing the dielectric constant of the nanocomposite. Here, we report on piezoelectric power generation from a lead-free LiNbO3 nanowire-based nanocomposite. Through ion ex...