Piezoelectricity and Ferroelectricity

Piezoelectricity is electric charge that accumulates in response to applied mechanical stress in materials that have non-centrosymmetric crystal structures. Piezoelectricity was discovered in the late 1800s by French physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie [1]. A subset of piezoelectricity is ferroelectricity: see Fig. 2.1. As a result of this all ferroelectric materials are piezoelectric. Ferroelectric materials exhibit interesting semiconductor properties that are analogous to the properties found in stressed piezoelectric materials. There is, therefore, a need to have a basic understanding of piezo- and ferroelectric materials as well as the relationship between them when developing a piezoelectric-based energy harvesting system.