Flexoelectric Engineering: from Fundamentals to Emerging Technologies

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2025
Flexoelectric polarization is induced by strain gradients that break inversion symmetry in otherwise nonpolar materials. Flexoelectric engineering is a powerful tool to engineer a wide range of materials, structures, and devices, including piezoelectric actuators, field effect transistors, and photodetectors. This Special Topic highlights emerging research on flexoelectric engineering including applications of multifunctional materials, flexoelectricity characterization, and exotic couplings such as flexomagnetism, flexo-magneto-electricity, and photo-flexoelectricity.

Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

  • Applications of flexoelectric effects
  • Flexoelectric engineering: experimental methodology and computational approaches
  • Electromechanics of flexible meso- and nanoscale objects: theory, experiment and implications for condensed and soft matter, bio-engineering and energy harvesting
  • Flexoelectricity in low-dimensional, graded and layered systems, including van der Waals and sliding ferroelectrics, ferrielectrics and ferroionics
  • Flexo-magneto-electric, flexo-antiferrodistortive, flexo-photovoltaic and other exotic couplings, including flexo-phonons, flexo-ferrons and flexo-polaritons
  • Flexo-sensitive chiral/curvilinear domain structures in ferroics and multiferroics

Guest Editors

Jan Seidel – School of Materials Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney

Anna Morozovska – Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Lihua Shao – Institute of Solid Mechanics, Beihang University

Lead JAP Editors

Jiangyu Li – Southern University of Science and Technology

Jian Shi – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2025