ABSTRACT
Fukada and Yasuda were the first to describe bone piezoelectrical properties, in the 1950s. When submitting dry bone samples to compressive load, an electrical potential was generated, an occurrence explained by the direct piezoelectric effect (Fukada and Yasuda, 1957). The nature of the piezoelectric effect is closely related to the occurrence of electric dipole moments in solids. In connective tissues such as bone, skin, tendon and dentine, the dipole moments are probably related to the collagen fibbers, composed by aligned strongly polar protein molecules (ElMessiery, 1981; Fukada and Yasuda, 1964; Halperin et al., 2004). The architecture of bone itself, with its aligned concentric lamellae, concurs for the existence of potentials along bone structure (ElMessiery, 1981).
