Selective electro - Thermal growth of zinc oxide nanowire on photolithographically patterned electrode for microsensor applications

Hydrothermal growth of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire (NW) enables a facile synthesis of versatile 1D nanostructure, but the conventional bulk heating procedure is assessed to be unsuitable for microsensor application in terms of selectivity and power consumption. In this study, we introduce selective electro-thermal growth of ZnO NW on photolithographically patterned electrode in the liquid environment. By applying constant current to the targeted electrode, densely packed ZnO NWs are successfully synthesized only at the desired electrode with very small power consumption. It is also confirmed that the electro - thermally grown ZnO NW network connecting two distinct electrode can be utilized as photosensitive channel, proving that this process as well as the resultant ZnO NW has a high potential for microsensor applications.