1. Preliminary concepts

1.1 Piezoelectricity

Piezoelectricity in quartz, systematically studied by the Curie brothers between 1880 and 1882, is a property present in certain materials where mechanical and electrostatic quantities are intrinsically coupled. The piezoelectric effect is reversible, meaning that electromechanical conversion takes place either by supplying mechanical energy which is transformed into electrical energy, or conversely by supplying electrical energy which is converted into mechanical energy.

The phenomenon arises from the deformation of the non-centrosymmetrical crystal structure, which has two consequences (figure 1 ):