Wafer-Scale Nanopatterning and Translation into High-Performance Piezoelectric Nanowires Thanh D. Nguyen, †,§ John M. Nagarah, ‡,§ Yi Qi, † Stephen S. Nonnenmann, † Anatoli V. Morozov, † Simonne Li, † Craig B. Arnold, † and Michael C. McAlpine* ,† † Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States, and ‡ Broad Fellows Program, Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States ABSTRACT The development of a facile method for fabricating one-dimensional, precisely positioned nanostructures over large areas offers exciting opportunities in fundamental research and innovative applications. Large-scale nanofabrication methods have been restricted in accessibility due to their complexity and cost. Likewise, bottom-up synthesis of nanowires has been limited in methods to assemble these structures at precisely defined locations. Nanomaterials such as PbZr x Ti 1-x O 3 (PZT) nanowires (NWs)swhich may be useful for nonvolatile memory storage (FeRAM), nanoactuation, and nanoscale power generationsare difficult to synthesize without suffering from polycrystallinity or poor stoichiometric control. Here, we report a novel fabrication method which requires only low- resolution photolithography and electrochemical etching to generate ultrasmooth NWs over wafer scales. These nanostructures are subsequently used as patterning templates to generate PZT nanowires with the highest reported piezoelectric performance (d eff ∼ 145 pm/V). The combined large-scale nanopatterning with hierarchical assembly of functional nanomaterials could yield breakthroughs in areas ranging from nanodevice arrays to nanodevice powering. KEYWORDS Nanomanufacturing, energy conversion, piezoelectric nanowires, laser annealing N anowires (NWs) have emerged as powerful building blocks for functional applications such as nanosen- sors, 1 nanogenerators, 2 and nanoelectronics. 3 Key to achieving high device performance is the generation of NWs whose characteristicssincluding geometry, composi- tion, and defect densitysare well controlled at the point of their growth or fabrication. Further, many applications require nanowires which are hierarchically patterned over large areas and at precisely defined locations. Thus, to generate NW arrays for practical applications, a fabrication method which is high throughput, not exotic, applicable to a broad range of functional materials, and capable of generating highly ordered NWs on a large-scale area is requisite. For example, bottom-up synthesis of NWs by vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) 4 or electrochemical 5 methods has successfully produced NWs with broad compositions 6 which can be assembled via flow alignment, 7 Langmuir-Blodgett assembly, 8 dry transfer, 9 or dielectrophoresis 10 over mac- roscopic scales. Recently, top-down methods, including nanoimprint li- thography (NIL), 11,12 superlattice nanowire pattern transfer (SNAP), 1,13 and lithographically patterned nanowire elec- trodeposition (LPNE) 14 have regained attractiveness in their ability to pattern NWs that can be deterministically posi- tioned. For example, LPNE has shown the preparation of NWs with diameters down to sub-50 nm for materials that can be electrodeposited (such as noble metals and lead telluride), 14,15 while SNAP is applicable to single-crystalline materials by etching metal templates into host substrates. 16 Here, we report a new top-down methodsinspired by LPNE and SNAP and free of complex processingsfor generating functional NW arrays with accurate placements over wafer scales. Our technique can generate NWs of complex com- positions and functionalities. Indeed, we demonstrate its power by realizing large area fabrication of high-perfor- mance piezoelectric NWs, which may have applications in nanodevice power generation. Our approach, which we term photolithography and etching for nanoscale lithography (PENCiL), produces a metal nanomask template over wafer scales. Figure 1a outlines the PENCiL process. First, a 100 nm Ni thin film is deposited onto any substrate. Next, arrays of 1-2 μm wide resist lines are patterned using standard photoli- thography. Third, and key to PENCiL, the Ni layer is electrochemically etched in concentrated phosphoric acid by “undercutting” the resist windows in order to define the NW structures. Variation in the applied voltage, pho- toresist patterns/heights, and etching times can be utilized to directly control the shapes and sizes of various NW features. 17 Most significantly, Figure 1b shows that NWs patterned using the PENCiL technique can reproducibly * Corresponding author: telephone number, (609) 542-0275; fax number, (609) 258-1918; e-mail, mcm@princeton.edu. § These authors contributed equally to this work. Received for review: 07/26/2010 Published on Web: 10/12/2010 pubs.acs.org/NanoLett © 2010 American Chemical Society 4595 DOI: 10.1021/nl102619c | Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 4595–4599