ISSN 1063-7397, Russian Microelectronics, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 7, pp. 491–495. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2014. Original Russian Text © S.A. Gavrilov, D.G. Gromov, S.V. Dubkov, M.Yu. Nazarkin, M.V. Silibin, S.P. Timoshenkov, A.M. Koz’min, A.S. Shulyat’ev, 2013, published in Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii. Elektronika, 2013, No. 4(102), pp. 44–50. 491 1. INTRODUCTION One-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures possess unusual properties and therefore are used in various devices and technologies [1]. The zinc oxide (ZnO), which is the wide-gap semiconductor with a peculiar donor-acceptor chemical bond that is close to an ionic one, is the material for such structures [2]. The piezoelectric properties of thin ZnO films are used in creating microphones [3] and volume acoustic resonators [4]. The piezoeffect that occurs when bending a ZnO nanowire is studied in [5–7]. The ZnO nanowire is found to be polarized when being bended using the cantilever of an atomic force microscope. Based on this phenomenon and using the array of ZnO nanow- ires, a nanogenerator that operates on ultrasonic waves is developed [8–10]. In the nanogenerator, mechani- cal energy is converted into electrical energy via the difference of potentials in the array of ZnO nanowires that are deformed under the action of an ultrasound. The potential difference arises between the bottom electrode, on which the array of ZnO nanowires is grown, and the top platinum electrode that touches upper ends of the nanowires in the array. The devel- oped nanogenerator is shown to provide only positive voltage, which is due to the Schottky diode created by the contact between the platinum electrode and the ZnO nanowire [11]. The main problem of the device with an array of piezoelectric wires concerns taking the signal from the ends of each nanowire at one time. When bending the piezoelectric wire at the upper end, the positive and negative charges arise from the polarization [12]. If the crystal lattice is stretched, the corresponding nanowire region is charged positively; if the crystal lattice shrinks, the nanowire region is charged negatively. In this respect, the top electrode must be commuted only to that part of the upper end of each piezoelectric wire which has the same charge. For this purpose, various designs of the top electrode such as the array of V-shaped metalized grooves or the array of metallized spikes are used [7, 13]. In the construction with V-shaped grooves, there are two obvious disadvantages: expensive photolithog- raphy is required to form the grooves and, with the operation of such a construction, the ZnO nanowires are generally aligned along the groove, which reduces the generator’s performance. When using an electrode with an array of spikes, some piezoelectric ZnO wires in the array are proved to be nonfunctional due to the closing of the positively and negatively charged regions of the upper end of the piezoelectric wire, which is subjected to bending by the top electrode or due to the loose contact between them and the second electrode with the length of piezoelectric wires being different. Another part of the correctly commutated in-parallel piezoelectric ele- ments has an unfixed unstable contact with the second electrode, which results in unavoidable losses of the electric energy generated by the bending of the piezo- electric wire. In this paper, the Al 2 O 3 metallized porous anodic oxide of aluminum is proposed to be used as the top electrode. The design of such a device is shown in Fig. 1. Note that a different number of ZnO nanowires (bunch) can contact the pores of the top electrode depending on the diameter of the Al 2 O 3 pore. As a result, it has the following advantages: (1) The nanowires placed in the pore fix each other; (2) The nanowires contacting the electrode touch the latter with similarly charged regions; Study of the Vibration-Sensitive Piezoelectric Element Based on ZnO Nanowires and Porous Electrode S. A. Gavrilov, D. G. Gromov, S. V. Dubkov, M. Yu. Nazarkin, M. V. Silibin, S. P. Timoshenkov, A. M. Koz’min, and A. S. Shulyat’ev National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET), Moscow, Russia e-mail: sv.dubkov@gmail.com Received February 1, 2013 Abstract—Characteristics of a sensitive element based on the array of ZnO nanowires and Al 2 O 3 metallized porous anodic oxide are studied. The element is shown to be sensitive to mechanical vibrations. The output signal of the device is found to have a linear dependence on acceleration. The dependence of the response on the frequency of mechanical vibrations is investigated. DOI: 10.1134/S1063739714070075