Recent developments of self-powered devices and systems have attracted much attention. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) has been regarded as one of the most promising materials for building high-performance nanogenerators. Herein, vertically aligned PZT nanorod arrays were synthesized on a pre-oxidized Ti substrate in the presence of a surfactant by a one-step hydrothermal method. The PZT nanorod arrays consist of an initial layer of a PZT film and well aligned nanorods with (001)-orientated tetragonal single crystalline structures. The PZT nanorods exhibited a high piezoelectric response with a d 33 value of up to 1600 pm V-1. A piezoelectric energy harvester was fabricated based on the PZT nanorod arrays, which exhibited outstanding energy harvesting performance with an open-circuit output voltage of 3.3 V and 8 V when the devices were pressed by a compressive 10 N force and a finger tapping motion, respectively. Moreover, the average power density generated by those two mechanical stimulations were up to 3.16 and 5.92 μW cm-2 with the external load of 1 MΩ.
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