A simple fabrication of ZnO‐nanowire‐based device and their implementation as a pH sensor, temperature sensor, and photo detector is reported. The presented multifunctional ZnO multiple‐nanowire sensor platform contains a Au finger structure, which is realized by conventional photolithography on a SiO2 substrate. The nanowires are grown using thermal chemical vapor deposition. In order to detect the physical signals, changes in electrical signals were measured (conductance and current). For temperature sensing, the current behavior from 90 to 380 K under vacuum conditions exhibit a tunneling behavior between spaced nanowires. For photo sensing, the current response between the “on” and “off” states of light was measured when exposed to different wavelengths ranging from UV to visible light. Finally, for pH sensing the conductance was measured between a pH of 5 and 8.5. The ZnO nanowires were protected from chemical attacks by a thin layer of C4F8‐plasma‐based coating.

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Electrical and thermal properties of polycrystalline Si thin films with two-dimensional phononic patterning were investigated at room temperature. Electrical and thermal conductivities for the phononic crystal nanostructures with a variety of radii of the circular holes were measured to systematically investigate the impact of the nanopatterning. The concept of phonon-glass and electron-crystal is valid in the investigated electron and phonon transport systems with the neck size of 80 nm. The thermal conductivity is more sensitive than the electrical conductivity to the nanopatterning due to the longer mean free path of the thermal phonons than that of the charge carriers. The values of the figure of merit ZT were 0.065 and 0.035, and the enhancement factors were 2 and 4 for the p-doped and n-doped phononic crystals compared to the unpatterned thin films, respectively, when the characteristic size of the phononic crystal nanostructure is below 100 nm. The greater enhancement factor of ZT for the n-doped sample seems to result from the strong phonon scattering by heavy phosphorus atoms at the grain boundaries.

Thermal phonon transport in silicon nanowires (Si NWs) and two-dimensional phononic crystal (2D PnC) nanostructures was investigated by measuring thermal conductivity using a micrometer-scale time-domain thermoreflectance. The impact of nanopatterning on thermal conductivity strongly depends on the geometry, specularity parameter, and thermal phonon mean free path (MFP) distribution. Thermal conductivities for 2D PnC nanostructures were found to be much lower than that for NWs with similar characteristic length and surface-to-volume ratio due to stronger phonon back scattering. In single-crystalline Si, PnC patterning has a stronger impact at 4 K than at room temperature due to a higher specularity parameter and a longer thermal phonon MFP. Nanowire patterning has a stronger impact in polycrystalline Si, where thermal phonon MFP distribution is biased longer by grain boundary scattering.

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