Time-Resolved Open-Circuit Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy for Quantitative Analysis of Nanowire Piezoelectricity and Triboelectricity Yonatan Calahorra,1∗ Wonjong Kim,2 Jelena Vukajlovic-Plestina,2 Anna Fontcuberta i Morral,23 Sohini Kar-Narayan1 1Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy University of Cambridge, CB3 0FS, Cambrdige, UK 2Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials, Institute of Materials, School of Engineering Ecole polytechnique fed´ erale´ de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 3Institute of Physics, School of Basic Sciences Ecole polytechnique fed´ erale´ de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland ∗To whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail:
[email protected] Piezoelectric nanowires are promising materials for sensing, actuation and en- ergy harvesting, due to their enhanced properties at the nanoscale. However, quantitative characterization of piezoelectricity in nanomaterials is challeng- ing due to practical limitations and the onset of additional electromechani- cal phenomena, such as the triboelectric and piezotronic effects. Here, we present an open-circuit conductive atomic force microscopy (cAFM) method- arXiv:1908.05512v4 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 2 Oct 2019 ology for quantitative extraction of the direct axial piezoelectric coefficients of nanowires. We show, both theoretically and experimentally, that the stan- dard short-circuit cAFM mode is inadequate for piezoelectric characterization of nanowires, and that such measurements are governed by competing mech- 1 anisms. We introduce an alternative open-circuit configuration, and employ time-resolved electromechanical measurements, to distinguish between elec- trical generation mechanisms and extract the piezoelectric coefficients. This method was applied to nanowires of GaAs, an important semiconductor, with relatively low piezoelectric coefficients. The results obtained for GaAs piezo- electric coefficient, ∼0.4-1 pm/V, are in good agreement with existing knowl- edge and theory.