Thermally stable piezoelectric sensors for quantitative pressure sensing based on linear piezoelectric zinc oxide thin films

Linear piezoelectric materials offer new opportunities for next-generation multifunctional micro/nano systems on chip aside from ferroelectrics. However, the advantage of quantitative pressure sensing of linear piezoelectric materials over ferroelectrics has not been demonstrated, while the thermal stability of linear piezoelectric zinc oxide (ZnO) is yet to be evaluated. In this work, pressure sensors based on linear piezoelectric undoped ZnO and ferroelectric vanadium doped ZnO (V-ZnO) films are studied side by side. Both films possess similar fiber textures oriented along the polar ZnO [002] direction, yet each of the V-ZnO grains consists of strip-like domains observed by SEM. Applying triangular-wave pressures, the linear piezoelectric ZnO sensor generates triangular-wave voltage signals that are one-to-one linearly correlated to the applied pressure, showing decisive advantages for quantitative pressure sensing compared to the ‘sail-like’ voltage signals of the ferroelectric V-ZnO sensor that is many-to-one correlated to the applied pressure. Superior thermal stability is demonstrated in the linear piezoelectric ZnO sensor showing stable pressure sensing properties up to 450 °C compared to the degraded sensing properties of the ferroelectric V-ZnO sensor at 150 °C. The thermally stable piezoelectric sensors for quantitative pressure sensing based on linear piezoelectric ZnO films serve as candidates for high-performance multifunctional micro/nano systems.