Surface Piezoelectricity for a Plane Boundary

Abstract

Material at or near a surface usually possesses different properties than the bulk material. The effect of such material heterogeneity may become remarkable when the surface-to-volume ratio of a body is large. In this paper, a plane boundary of a piezoelectric body is modeled as a thin layer with specified material properties. The state-space formalism is employed to give a transfer relation between the state vectors at the top and bottom surfaces of the layer. Using the power series of the transfer matrix, the equations of surface piezoelectricity for different orders are derived. A simple example is given to demonstrate the surface effect on wave propagation in a half-space.