Development and progress in piezotronics

The coupling of piezoelectric and semiconducting properties gives rise to the effect of piezotronics, which regulates charge carrier transport through the modulation of energy barriers at contact interfaces. With piezoelectric semiconductors as the building blocks, extensive progress has been made, covering the fundamental physics level, the individual device level as well as the integrated system level, effectively establishing a new field of study. By manipulating interfacial processes incorporating ionic charges, free electrons/holes, photons and chemicals, novel interdisciplinary effects have been studied and reported. This article aims at reviewing the milestone progress and offering perspectives of this new field of study in applications for multi-functional sensing systems, human-electronics interfacing, MEMS, energy harvesting and so on. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.