Piezoelectricity

Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials

(such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA and
various proteins) in response to applied mechanical stress. The word
piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat. French
physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered piezoelectricity in 1880.

The piezoelectric effect results from the linear electromechanical interaction

between the mechanical and electrical states in crystalline materials with no
inversion symmetry. The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process: materials
exhibiting the piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of electrical charge
resulting from an applied mechanical force) also exhibit the reverse piezoelectric
effect, the internal generation of a mechanical strain resulting from an applied
electrical field. For example, lead zirconate titanate crystals will generate
measurable piezoelectricity when their static structure is deformed by about 0.1%
of the original dimension. Conversely, those same crystals will change about 0.1%
of their static dimension when an external electric field is applied to the material.
The inverse piezoelectric effect is used in the production of ultrasonic sound
waves.
Uses
Piezoelectricity is exploited in a number of useful applications, such as the
production and detection of sound, piezoelectric inkjet printing, generation of
high voltages, electronic frequency generation, microbalances, to drive an
ultrasonic nozzle, and ultrafine focusing of optical assemblies. It forms the basis
for a number of scientific instrumental techniques with atomic resolution, the
scanning probe microscopies, such as STM, AFM, MTA, and SNOM. It also finds
everyday uses such as acting as the ignition source for cigarette lighters, and push-
start propane barbecues, as well as being used as the time reference source in
quartz watches.

Mechanism
The nature of the piezoelectric effect is closely related to the occurrence of
electric dipole moments in solids. The latter may either be induced for ions on
crystal lattice sites with asymmetric charge surroundings (as in BaTiO3 and PZTs)
or may directly be carried by molecular groups (as in cane sugar). The dipole
density or polarization (dimensionality [C·m/m3] ) may easily be calculated for
crystals by summing up the dipole moments per volume of the crystallographic
unit cell. As every dipole is a vector, the dipole density P is a vector field. Dipoles
near each other tend to be aligned in regions called Weiss domains. The domains
are usually randomly oriented, but can be aligned using the process of poling (not
the same as magnetic poling), a process by which a strong electric field is applied
across the material, usually at elevated temperatures. Not all piezoelectric
materials can be poled.

Of decisive importance for the piezoelectric effect is the change of polarization P

when applying a mechanical stress. This might either be caused by a
reconfiguration of the dipole-inducing surrounding or by re-orientation of
molecular dipole moments under the influence of the external stress.
Piezoelectricity may then manifest in a variation of the polarization strength, its
direction or both, with the details depending on: 1. the orientation of P within the
crystal; 2. crystal symmetry; and 3. the applied mechanical stress. The change in P
appears as a variation of surface charge density upon the crystal faces, i.e. as a
variation of the electric field extending between the faces caused by a change in
dipole density in the bulk. For example, a 1 cm3 cube of quartz with 2 kN (500 lbf)
of correctly applied force can produce a voltage of 12500 V.

Piezoelectric materials also show the opposite effect, called the converse
piezoelectric effect, where the application of an electrical field creates mechanical
deformation in the crystal.

Discovery and early research

The pyroelectric effect, by which a material generates an electric potential in
response to a temperature change, was studied by Carl Linnaeus and Franz
Aepinus in the mid-18th century. Drawing on this knowledge, both René Just Haüy
and Antoine César Becquerel posited a relationship between mechanical stress
and electric charge; however, experiments by both proved inconclusive.

The first demonstration of the direct piezoelectric effect was in 1880 by the
brothers Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie. They combined their knowledge of
pyroelectricity with their understanding of the underlying crystal structures that
gave rise to pyroelectricity to predict crystal behavior, and demonstrated the
effect using crystals of tourmaline, quartz, topaz, cane sugar, and Rochelle salt
(sodium potassium tartrate tetrahydrate). Quartz and Rochelle salt exhibited the
most piezoelectricity.

The Curies, however, did not predict the converse piezoelectric effect. The
converse effect was mathematically deduced from fundamental thermodynamic
principles by Gabriel Lippmann in 1881.The Curies immediately confirmed the
existence of the converse effect, and went on to obtain quantitative proof of the
complete reversibility of electro-elasto-mechanical deformations in piezoelectric
crystals.
 For the next few decades, piezoelectricity remained something of a laboratory
curiosity. More work was done to explore and define the crystal structures that
exhibited piezoelectricity. This culminated in 1910 with the publication of
Woldemar Voigt's Lehrbuch der Kristallphysik (Textbook on Crystal Physics),which
described the 20 natural crystal classes capable of piezoelectricity, and rigorously
defined the piezoelectric constants using tensor analysis.

Crystal classes
Of the 32 crystal classes, 21 are non-centrosymmetric (not having a centre of
symmetry), and of these, 20 exhibit direct piezoelectricity[19] (the 21st is the
cubic class 432). Ten of these represent the polar crystal classes,[20] which show a
spontaneous polarization without mechanical stress due to a non-vanishing
electric dipole moment associated with their unit cell, and which exhibit
pyroelectricity. If the dipole moment can be reversed by applying an external
electric field, the material is said to be ferroelectric.

Polar crystal classes: 1, 2, m, mm2, 4, 4mm, 3, 3m, 6, 6mm.

Piezoelectric crystal classes: 1, 2, m, 222, mm2, 4, 4, 422, 4mm, 42m, 3, 32, 3m, 6,
6, 622, 6mm, 62m, 23, 43m.

For polar crystals, for which P ≠ 0 holds without applying a mechanical load, the
piezoelectric effect manifests itself by changing the magnitude or the direction of
P or both.

For the nonpolar but piezoelectric crystals, on the other hand, a polarization P
different from zero is only elicited by applying a mechanical load. For them the
stress can be imagined to transform the material from a nonpolar crystal class (P =
0) to a polar one,[13] having P ≠ 0.

Materials
Many materials, both natural and synthetic, exhibit piezoelectricity:

Naturally occurring crystals

 Quartz
 Berlinite (AlPO4), a rare phosphate mineral that is structurally identical to
quartz
 Sucrose (table sugar)
 Rochelle salt
 Topaz
 Tourmaline-group mineral
 Lead titanate (PbTiO3).

Other natural materials

Biological materials exhibiting piezoelectric properties include:

 Tendon
 Silk
 Wood due to piezoelectric texture
 Enamel
 Dentin
 DNA

Application
Currently, industrial and manufacturing is the largest application market for
piezoelectric devices, followed by the automotive industry. Strong demand also
comes from medical instruments as well as information and telecommunications.
The global demand for piezoelectric devices was valued at approximately US$14.8
billion in 2010. The largest material group for piezoelectric devices is
piezoceramics, and piezopolymer is experiencing the fastest growth due to its low
weight and small size.