Fabrication of nano-piezomaterials for powering bioelectronics and interfaced cellular biomechanics

Nanostructures of piezoelectric materials are attractive building blocks for useful bioimplant devices such as self-powering nanogenerators and nano-biosensors. Yet, one of the most efficient piezo-nanomaterials - PbZr _x Ti_1∈-∈x O₃ (PZT) nanowires is difficult to synthesize without suffering from polycrystallinity or poor stoichiometric control. Current large-scale nanofabrication methods have been restricted by their complexity and cost, while bottom-up synthesis of nanowires has been limited in methods to assemble these structures at precisely-defined locations. Here, we report a novel fabrication method which requires only low resolution photolithography to generate ultra smooth, high performance PZT nanowires over wafer scales. These fabricated PZT nanomaterials also shows a biocompatible interface with living cells to offer a great potential for its applications in biomedicine such as self-powering implant devices and cellular biomechanical sensors.