What is Piezoelectricity?
Piezoelectricity (also called the piezoelectric effect) is the appearance of an electrical potential (a voltage, in other words) across the sides of a crystal when you subject it to mechanical stress (by squeezing it).
In practice, the crystal becomes a kind of tiny battery with a positive charge on one face and a negative charge on the opposite face; current flows if we connect the two faces together to make a circuit. In the reverse piezoelectric effect, a crystal becomes mechanically stressed (deformed in shape) when a voltage is applied across its opposite faces.
What causes piezoelectricity?
Think of a crystal and you probably picture balls (atoms) mounted on bars (the bonds that hold them together), a bit like a climbing frame.
In most crystals (such as metals), the unit cell (the basic repeating unit) is symmetrical; in piezoelectric crystals, it isn’t. Normally, piezoelectric crystals are electrically neutral: the atoms inside them may not be symmetrically arranged, but their electrical charges are perfectly balanced: a positive charge in one place cancels out a negative charge nearby. However, if you squeeze or stretch a piezoelectric crystal, you deform the structure, pushing some of the atoms closer together or further apart, upsetting the balance of positive and negative, and causing net electrical charges to appear. This effect carries through the whole structure so net positive and negative charges appear on the opposite, outer faces of the crystal.
The reverse-piezoelectric effect occurs in the opposite way. Put a voltage across a piezoelectric crystal and you’re subjecting the atoms inside it to “electrical pressure.” They have to move to rebalance themselves—and that’s what causes piezoelectric crystals to deform (slightly change shape) when you put a voltage across them.
