About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 218. Chapters: Piezoelectricity, Bose-Einstein condensate, Optical tweezers, High-temperature superconductivity, Glass transition, Spinodal decomposition, Electron mobility, Crystal structure, Superfluid helium-4, Colloid, Topological order, Colloidal crystal, Multiferroics, State of matter, Low-energy electron diffraction, Geometrical frustration, Magnetic refrigeration, Quasicrystal, Macroscopic quantum phenomena, Supercritical fluid, Fermi level, Hall effect, Photonic crystal, Composite fermion, Density of states, Permittivity, Nanofluidic circuitry, Topological insulator, Collision cascade, Emulsion, Movable cellular automaton, Single-molecule magnet, Debye model, Crystal growth, Degenerate matter, Stopping power (particle radiation), Quasiparticle, Crystallography, Ferroelectricity, Surface plasmon, Toric code, Bragg's law, Free electron model, Work function, Threshold displacement energy, Hardness, Diamond anvil cell, Dynamical mean field theory, Critical point (thermodynamics), History of superconductivity, Superlattice, Surface reconstruction, Effective medium approximations, Fermi liquid theory, Rydberg matter, Sedimentation potential, Doping (semiconductor), Soft matter, Bilbao Crystallographic Server, XANES, Fermi energy, Phase (matter), Double layer (interfacial), Hubbard model, Quantum Hall effect, Anderson localization, Josephson effect, Fractional quantum Hall effect, Effective mass (solid-state physics), Surface energy, Thomas-Fermi screening, Wigner crystal, Binary collision approximation, Gross-Pitaevskii equation, Coercivity, Boson, Strongly correlated quantum spin liquid, Contact angle, Surface phonon, Surface extended X-ray absorption fine structure, Electroacoustic phenomena, Supercooling. Excerpt: Piezoelectricity ( ) is the charge that accumulates in certain solid materials (notably 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. It is derived from the Greek piezo or piezein ( ), which means to squeeze or press, and electric or electron (), which stands for amber, an ancient source of electric charge. Piezoelectricity was discovered in 1880 by French physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie. The piezoelectric effect is understood as the linear electromechanical interaction between the mechanical and the electrical state in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry. The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process in that materials exhibiting the direct 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 production of ultrasonic sound waves. Piezoelectricity is found in useful applications such as the production and detection of sound, generation of high voltages, electronic frequency generation, microbalances, and ultrafine focusing of optical assemblies. It is also the basis of a number of scientific instrumental techniques with atomic resolution, the scanning probe microscopies such as STM, AFM, MTA, SNOM, etc., and everyday uses such as acting as the ignition source for cigarette lighters and push-start propane barbecues. The pyroelectric effect, by which
