Morphology and electrical properties of high aspect ratio ZnO nanowires grown by hydrothermal method without repeated batch process

We propose a growth method to obtain ZnO nanowires with very high aspect ratios which involves adding ammonium chloride without repeated batch process. The ZnO nanowires with a length of over 13.6 mu m and an aspect ratio of about 97 were grown by the proposed method. Nanogenerators based on the prepared ZnO nanowires were fabricated and their electrical properties were characterized as a function of aspect ratio to verify the changes in the piezoelectric potential. We obtained a maximum current density of similar to 1.6 mu m/cm(2) by applying a compressive force to the nanogenerator using a linear motor. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4748289]