ABSTRACT
Piezoelectricity was studied first by the brothers Jacques Curie and Pierre Curie. They found that tension and compression in certain crystalline minerals such as tourmaline, quartz, topaz, cane sugar, and Rochelle salt generated voltages of opposite polarity. Piezoelectric materials are a special type of dielectrics in which the electrical and elastic fields are coupled. When a dielectric material is loaded with an external electrical field, electric dipoles are generated due to the interaction of the electrical field with the dielectric structure. When a piezoelectric material is loaded with mechanical stress, the shape of the atomic structure of the crystal deforms. A net polarization requires that the piezoelectric atomic structure cannot be centrosymmetric, because the dipole formed must not be canceled out by other dipoles. One of the applications of piezoelectric materials is the piezoelectric accelerometer, which collects the charge generated by a piezoelectric material while it deforms due to seismic mass vibration.
