Ferroelectric liquid crystalline piezoelectric elastomers

Kremer F, Skupin H, Lehmann W, Hartmann L, Stein P, Finkelmann H (2000) Structure, mobility, and piezoelectricity in ferroelectric liquid crystalline elastomers. Adv Chem Phys 113 183-201. doi 10.1002/9780470141724.ch5... 

In addition, some liquid-crystalline elastomers are ferroelectric (possess spontaneous electric polarization) [196,197], or piezoelectric (become electrically... 

Cross-linked polymeric liquid crystals offer a wide variety of unique and in-tere.sting properties. Because of the interaction between the mesogens and the network backbone in liquid crystal elastomers, mechanical deformations can align the director, and these materials are piezoelectric. Industrial applications of liquid crystalline thermosets are driven by additional properties such as toughness, a tunable coefficient of thermal expansion, ferroelectricity, and nonlinear optical properties. Reviews on this topic are given by Barclay and Ober [4] and by Warner and Terentjev [5]. 

Considerably less work has been done on discotic liquid-crystalline elastomers, and the same seems to be true for smectic elastomers even though some of them have the additional interesting property of being chiral (276) Some liquid-crystalline elastomers are ferroelectric (possess spontaneous electric polarization) or piezoelectric (become electrically polarized when mechanically strained, and become mechanically strained when exposed to an electric field) (277). 

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