Abstract
Piezotronics with capacity of constructing adaptive and seamless interactions between electronics/machines and human/ambient are of value in Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering. Here, we report a kind of highly sensitive strain sensor based on piezotronic tunneling junction (Ag/HfO2/n-ZnO), which utilizes the strain-induced piezoelectric potential to control the tunneling barrier height and width in parallel, and hence to synergistically modulate the electrical transport process. The piezotronic tunneling strain sensor has a high on/off ratio of 478.4 and high gauge factor of 4.8 × 105 at the strain of 0.10%, which is more than 17.8 times larger than that of a conventional Schottky-barrier based strain sensor in control group as well as some existing ZnO nanowire or nanobelt based sensors. This work provides in-depth understanding for the basic mechanism of piezotronic modulation on tunneling junction, and realizes the highly sensitive strain sensor of piezotronic tunneling junction on device scale, which has great potential in advanced micro/nano-electromechanical devices and systems.
Highlights
Piezotronics with capacity of constructing adaptive and seamless interactions between electronics/machines and human/ambient are of value in Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering
Previous research has reported a basic exploration of principle of piezotronic tunneling junction based on atomic force microscopy (AFM), and whether it can be used for high-performance devices at macroscopic scale is a matter of great concern in piezotronics
This work achieves the high performance of piezotronic tunneling junction at the device scale, and provides in-depth understandings on the basic characteristics of the piezotronic modulation on the tunneling effect, which can expand the practical application of quantum tunneling effect in mechanical sensors
Summary
Piezotronics with capacity of constructing adaptive and seamless interactions between electronics/machines and human/ambient are of value in Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering. The universal methods are: seeking piezoelectric semiconductor with high piezoelectric coefficients[24] or special geometric characteristics[25] to improve the efficiency of piezoelectric polarization charge generation; applying strategies such as introducing alloy structure[26] and internal holes[27] to weaken the electrostatic shielding effect of free carriers on the piezoelectric polarization charge; optimizing the device structure (e.g., double-channel structure[28] and ion-gelgating structure29) to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the device’s use of the piezoelectric polarization charges These studies mainly focused on the piezotronic modification of interface barrier height and improved the piezotronic effect on mechanical sensing. This work achieves the high performance of piezotronic tunneling junction at the device scale, and provides in-depth understandings on the basic characteristics of the piezotronic modulation on the tunneling effect, which can expand the practical application of quantum tunneling effect in mechanical sensors
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