Recently, A novel piezoelectric crystals research group leaded by Prof. Erwei Shi in SIC made great improvement in understanding the relationship between the crystal structure and piezoelectricity in piezoelectric crystals with zinc-blende and wurtzite structures. The result was published on Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 112902, 2007 on Sept 10, 2007.

In 1880, piezoelectricity was firstly discovered by the brothers Curie while they were studying quartz. Nowadays, piezoelectric materials have been widely used as the key materials in filters, sensors, resonators, and so on. They play a very important role in the modern industries. With the development of modern wireless communication technology, it is necessary to find a new kind of piezoelectric material to make wide-band filters. People have tried to understand the intrinsic relationships between structure and piezoelectric properties for a long time. Although many efforts have been made, the intrinsic relationships between structure and piezoelectric properties still remain a problem. It will be more efficient to search new piezoelectric materials with high performance if the relationship between structure and piezoelectric properties is clear. The letter was aimed at investigating the relationships between piezoelectric properties and structural characteristics in zinc-blende and wurtzite structures. The relationships between structure and piezoelectric properties in zinc-blende and wurtzite structure binary compounds have been investigated using the first principles methods. The piezoelectric property is proven to be highly related to the degree of asymmetry in structure. The structure parameters that can be used to describe the degree of asymmetry are found, that is, P for the zinc-blende structure and θ for the wurtzite structure. A simple linear relation is found between the piezoelectric constant and these structure parameters for both zinc-blende and wurtzite structure binary compounds. This kind of relationship is thought to be common in all piezoelectric crystal with various kinds of structures. This will help researcher to search novel piezoelectric crystals more efficient, depending on estimation of the piezoelectric constants from the structure parameters of the crystals.

This work was financial supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China and the Knowledge Innovation Program in Chinese Academy of Sciences.