Flexoelectricity in pyramid compression: decoupling from effective to intrinsic

Abstract

Flexoelectricity, as a property of dielectric materials, is an electro-mechanical coupling effect between electric polarization and mechanical strain gradient. Plenty of research on exploring flexoelectric coefficients has been implemented by using different structures and methods for a better understanding of the electro-mechanical coupling relationship. A flexoelectric coefficient bridges the electric polarization and strain gradient, and has been experimentally researched effectively in many cases. In this work, a method is designed to obtain multiple flexoelectric coefficients intrinsically from truncated pyramid compression experiments in a low symmetric dielectric material polyvinylidene fluoride. By applying a series of experiments with designed boundary conditions, the flexoelectric coefficients are experimentally decoupled. With this method, multiple flexoelectric coefficients in low symmetric dielectric materials are solved intrinsically. This approach provides fundamental support for further research of flexoelectricity in low symmetric dielectric materials.