Highly sensitive strain sensors based on piezotronic tunneling junction

Qiuhong Yu; Rui Ge; Juan Wen; Tao Du; Junyi Zhai; Shuhai Liu; Longfei Wang; Yong Qin

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28443-0

Highly sensitive strain sensors based on piezotronic tunneling junction

Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 9;13(1):778. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28443-0.

Authors

Qiuhong Yu^#^{1

2}, Rui Ge^#¹, Juan Wen², Tao Du¹, Junyi Zhai^{3

4}, Shuhai Liu⁵, Longfei Wang^{6

7}, Yong Qin⁸

Affiliations

¹ School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Xidian University, 710071, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
² Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, School of Materials and Energy, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.
³ Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 101400, Beijing, China.
⁴ College of Nanoscience and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China.
⁵ Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, School of Materials and Energy, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, Gansu, China. liushuhai1991@live.cn.
⁶ Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 101400, Beijing, China. lfwang12@binn.cas.cn.
⁷ College of Nanoscience and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China. lfwang12@binn.cas.cn.
⁸ Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, School of Materials and Energy, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, Gansu, China. qinyong@lzu.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

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.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't