Dr. Zhong Lin (ZL) WANG now is the Hightower Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, Regents' Professor, Engineering Distinguished Professor and Director, Center for Nanostructure Characterization, at Georgia Tech.
Dr. Wang has made original and innovative contributions to the synthesis, discovery, characterization and understanding of fundamental physical properties of oxide nanobelts and nanowires, as well as applications of nanowires in energy sciences, electronics, optoelectronics and biological science. His discovery and breakthroughs in developing nanogenerators establish the principle and technological road map for harvesting mechanical energy from environment and biological systems for powering a personal electronics.[more about Dr Zhong Lin WANG]

Abstract:

Developing wireless nanodevices and nanosystems is of critical importance for sensing, medical science, environmental/infrastructure monitoring, defense technology and even personal electronics. It is highly desirable for wireless devices to be self-powered without using battery, without which most of the sensor network may be impossible. The piezoelectric nanogenerators developed by us have the potential to serve as self-sufficient power sources for mico/nano-systems. For Wurtzite structures that have non-central symmetry, such as ZnO, GaN and InN, a piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) is created in the crystal by applying a strain. The nanogenerator is invented by using the piezopotential as the driving force for electrons to flow in responding to a dynamic straining of piezoelectric nanowires. A gentle straining can produce an output voltage of up to 20-40 V from an integrated nanogenerator. Furthermore, piezopotential in the wurtzite structure can serve as a “gate” voltage that can effectively tune/control the charge transport across an interface/junction; electronics fabricated based on such a mechanism is coined as piezotronics, with applications in force/pressure triggered/controlled electronic devices, sensors, logic units and memory. By using the piezotronic effect, we show that the optoelectronc devices fabricated using wurtzite materials can have superior performance as solar cell, photon detector and light emitting diode. Piezotronic is likely to serve as a “mechanosensation” for directly interfacing biomechanical action with silicon based technology and active flexible electronics.

[1] Wang and Song, Science, 312 (2006) 242.
[2] Wang et al., Science, 316 (2007) 102.
[3] Qin et al., Nature, 451 (2008) 809.
[4] Yang et al., Nature Nanotechnology, 4 (2009) 34-39.
[5] Z.L. Wang, Nanogenerators for self-powered devices and systems (http://hdl.handle.net/1853/39262).
[6] Z.L. Wang,  Nano Today 5 (2010) 540.
[7] Wu et al., Adv. Materials, 22 (2010) 4711.
[8] Hu et al., ACS Nano, 4 (2010) 1234.
[9] Yang et al., Nano Letters, 11 (2011) 4012.
[10] for details: www.nanoscience.gatech.edu

Dr. Zhong Lin (ZL) Wang received his PhD from Arizona State University in transmission electron microscopy. His research on self-powered nanosystems has inspired the worldwide effort in academia and industry for studying energy for micro-nano-systems, which is now a distinct disciplinary in energy research and future sensor networks. He coined and pioneered the field of piezotronics and piezo-phototronics by introducing piezoelectric potential gated charge transport process in fabricating new electronic and optoelectronic devices. This breakthrough by redesign CMOS transistor has important applications in smart MEMS/NEMS, nanorobotics, human-electronics interface and sensors. Dr. Wang’s publications have been cited for over 46,000 times. The H-index of his citations is 103. Dr. Wang was elected as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009, member of European Academy of Sciences in 2002, fellow of American Physical Society in 2005, fellow of AAAS in 2006, fellow of Materials Research Society in 2008, fellow of Microscopy Society of America in 2010, and fellow of the World Innovation Foundation in 2002. He received 2011 MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society, 1999 Burton Medal from Microscopy Society of America, 2001 S.T. Li prize for Outstanding Contribution in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the 2009 Purdy Award from American Ceramic Society.

Details can be found at: http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu