The number and types of all possible rotational symmetries for flexoelectric tensors

Abstract

Flexoelectricity is due to the electric polarization generated by a non-zero strain gradient in a dielectric material without or with centrosymmetric microstructure. It is characterized by a fourth-order tensor, referred to as flexoelectric tensor, which relates the electric polarization vector to the gradient of the second-order strain tensor. This paper solves the fundamental problem of determining the number and types of all possible rotational symmetries for flexoelectric tensors and specifies the number of independent material parameters contained in a flexoelectric tensor belonging to a given symmetry class. These results are useful and even indispensable for experimentally identifying or theoretically/numerically estimating the flexoelectric coefficients of a dielectric material.