Flexoelectricity
Professor Pradeep Sharma will give a Plenary Lecture at the IMECE Congress
Professor Pradeep Sharma will give a Plenary Lecture for Track 7 Dynamics, Vibration and Control at the IMECE Congress of the ASME in Columbus, OH, on Tuesday, November 1, 9:15AM - 10:00AM with title: Flexoelectricity and Electrets. The Abstract and Bio can be found at https://event.asme.org/IMECE/Program/Track-Plenary-Speakers. The lecture is sponsored by the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME.
Flexoelectricity in soft elastomers and the molecular mechanisms underpinning the design and emergence of giant flexoelectricity
Dear colleagues,
We invite you to see the preprint of our new paper "Flexoelectricity in soft elastomers and the molecular mechanisms underpinning the design and emergence of giant flexoelectricity" that will appear in PNAS. Here we present a molecular-to-continuum scale theory for the flexoelectric effect in elastomers. The theory unveils a mechanism for achieving giant flexoelectricity--which finds support in prior experimental results; it is then leveraged for designing elastomers for 1) piezoelectricity, 2) tuning the direction of flexoelectricity, and 3) flexoelectricity which is invariant with respect to spurious deformations (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2102477118).
Flexoelectricity as a universal mechanism for energy harvesting from crumpling of thin sheets
Can the mere crumpling of a paper produce electricity? An inhomogeneous strain can induce electrical response in all dielectrics and not just piezoelectric materials. This phenomenon of flexoelectricity is rather modest unless unusually large strain gradients are present. In this paper, we analyze the crumpling of thin elastic sheets and establish scaling laws for their electromechanical behavior to prove that an extremely strong flexoelectric response is achieved at submicron length scales.
Converse flexoelectricity yields large piezoresponse force microscopy signals in non-piezoelectric materials
I would like to share our recent work published in Nature Communications.
Piezoelectric Mimicry of Flexoelectricity
I would like to share our recent work published in Physical Review Letters.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.205502
Journal Club for November 2018: Beyond piezoelectricity: Flexoelectricity in solids
Beyond piezoelectricity: Flexoelectricity in solids
Jiawang Hong
School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology
1. Introduction
Flexoelectricity in Bones: A nanophenomenon that triggers the bone-repair process
Bones generate electricity under pressure, and this electromechanical behavior is thought to be essential for bone's self-repair and remodeling properties. The origin of this response is attributed to the piezoelectricity of collagen, which is the main structural protein of bones. In theory, however, any material can also generate voltages in response to strain gradients, thanks to the property known as flexoelectricity.