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danielschreber | 6 months ago

The title made me think of piezoelectricity which isn't new and has many applications.

However, it seems that it's a similar but different phenomenon called "flexoelectricity" which was discovered around 1964. It was also predicted before discovery.

Bing Copilot helped me find an article which looks like a good overview of flexoelectricity, although mostly over my head.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.0132

   "First-principles theory and calculation of flexoelectricity"
   Jiawang Hong and David Vanderbilt
First paragraph:

Flexoelectricity (FxE) describes the linear coupling between electric polarization and a strain gradient, and is always symmetry-allowed because a strain gradient automatically breaks the inversion symmetry. This is unlike the case of piezoelectricity (coupling of polarization to strain), which arises only in noncentrosymmetric materials.

It goes on to say that interest has been revived after ~50 years because of finding ways to make the effect ~3 orders of magnitude stronger, and because nanoscale structures also magnify the effect.

The earliest reference is to a Soviet physics journal which I assume is not online:

S. M. Kogan, Sov. Phys. Solid State 5, 2069 (1964)

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moi2388|6 months ago

Yes, flexoelectricity could be useful. But flexoelectricity in ice, which is what this paper is about, I think will have no applications for machines, since nobody is building machines out of ice..