Abstract
Converse flexoelectricity is a mechanical stress induced by an electric polarization gradient. It can appear in any material, irrespective of symmetry, whenever there is an inhomogeneous electric field distribution. This situation invariably happens in piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), which is a technique whereby a voltage is delivered to the tip of an atomic force microscope in order to stimulate and probe piezoelectricity at the nanoscale. While PFM is the premier technique for studying ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity at the nanoscale, here we show, theoretically and experimentally, that large effective piezoelectric coefficients can be measured in non-piezoelectric dielectrics due to converse flexoelectricity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1266 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
G.C. and N.D. acknowledge financial support from ERC Starting grant 308023, from Plan Nacional project MINECO Grant MAT2016-77100-C2-1-P and FIS2015-73932-JIN and support of Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant No. 2017-SGR-579). ICN2 acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa Program (MINECO, Grant SEV-2017-0706) and the CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya. I.A. acknowledges the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya through the prize “ICREA Academia” for excellence in research and of the European Research Council (StG-679451). I.A. and A.A. also acknowledge the support of Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant No. 2017-SGR-1278).