Abstract:
Local piezoelectric properties of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in a photo-epoxy polymer are investigated by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). Integrating ZnO NPs into a photosensitive SU-8 polymer matrix not only retains the highly desired piezoelectric properties of the ZnO, but also preserves photosensitivity and optical transparency of the SU-8 polymer. These results have strong implications for simple photolithography based low-cost fabrication of piezoelectric microelectromechanicalsystems (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanicalsystems (NEMS) in both sensing and energy harvesting applications