TY - JOUR
T1 - Flexoelectricity in solids
T2 - Progress, challenges, and perspectives
AU - Wang, Bo
AU - Gu, Yijia
AU - Zhang, Shujun
AU - Chen, Long Qing
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grant No. DMR 1410714 and DMR-1744213. Long-Qing Chen also gratefully acknowledges the support by the Hamer Professorship. Shujun Zhang thanks to the support of ARC (FT140100698). Authors would like to thank Mr. Xiaoxing Cheng for the help on schematic figures and Professor Baixiang Xu at Technical University of Darmstadt for comments and suggestions on the manuscript.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grant No. DMR 1410714 and DMR-1744213 . Long-Qing Chen also gratefully acknowledges the support by the Hamer Professorship. Shujun Zhang thanks to the support of ARC ( FT140100698 ). Authors would like to thank Mr. Xiaoxing Cheng for the help on schematic figures and Professor Baixiang Xu at Technical University of Darmstadt for comments and suggestions on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - The flexoelectricity describes the contribution of the linear couplings between the electric polarization and strain gradient and between polarization gradient and strain to the thermodynamics of a solid and represents the amount of polarization change of a solid arising from a strain gradient. Although the magnitude of the flexoelectric effect is generally small, its contribution to the overall thermodynamics of a solid may become significant or even dominant at the nanometer scale. Recent experimental and computational efforts have led to significant advances in our understanding of the flexoelectric effect and its exploration of potential applications in devices such as sensors, actuators, energy harvesters, and nanoelectronics. Here we review the theoretical development and experimental progress in flexoelectricity including the types of materials systems that have been explored and their potential applications. We discuss the challenges in the experimental measurements and density functional theory computations of the flexoelectric coefficients including understanding the order of magnitude discrepancies between existing experimentally measured and computed values. Finally, we offer a perspective on the future directions for research on flexoelectricity.
AB - The flexoelectricity describes the contribution of the linear couplings between the electric polarization and strain gradient and between polarization gradient and strain to the thermodynamics of a solid and represents the amount of polarization change of a solid arising from a strain gradient. Although the magnitude of the flexoelectric effect is generally small, its contribution to the overall thermodynamics of a solid may become significant or even dominant at the nanometer scale. Recent experimental and computational efforts have led to significant advances in our understanding of the flexoelectric effect and its exploration of potential applications in devices such as sensors, actuators, energy harvesters, and nanoelectronics. Here we review the theoretical development and experimental progress in flexoelectricity including the types of materials systems that have been explored and their potential applications. We discuss the challenges in the experimental measurements and density functional theory computations of the flexoelectric coefficients including understanding the order of magnitude discrepancies between existing experimentally measured and computed values. Finally, we offer a perspective on the future directions for research on flexoelectricity.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.pmatsci.2019.05.003
DO - 10.1016/j.pmatsci.2019.05.003
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85071783667
SN - 0079-6425
VL - 106
JO - Progress in Materials Science
JF - Progress in Materials Science
M1 - 100570
ER -