Piezoelectricity
Piezoelectricidad
- Date
- 1880 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The Curie brothers observed that certain crystals (quartz, tourmaline, Rochelle salt) generate electric charge when put under mechanical pressure, a reversible effect that a year later, in 1881, the German physicist Wilhelm Gottlieb Hankel named piezoelectricity.
What it led to
- Ultrasound generators and sonar
- Quartz oscillators for clocks and radio frequency