A Georgia Tech researcher manipulates and measures nanodevices based on zinc oxide nanowires fabricated on a flexible polymer substrate. (Credit: Gary Meek)
Here is what EETimes says about piezotronics: Piezotronic transistors harness the piezoelectric effect in zinc-oxide nanowires to transform mechanical motion into a signal that controls arithmetic—logic operations. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently demonstrated their new breed of piezotronic circuits performing standard digital circuit functions.
Piezotronics marks a new class electronic device that uses a MEMS-like moving part to create an electric field which controls a field-effect transistors (FET). Its inventor, professor Zhong Lin Wang, claims that such strain-gated transistors work like a traditional FET—with the current flowing from source to drain being gated by an electric field--but the field is generated by bending a piezoelectric nanowire—called strain—rather than by storing charge on the gate. The resulting strain-gated transistor could have direct uses for nanobots, microfluidics and other applications of micro-electro-mechanical systems...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-9hSA
