In this study, we developed piezoelectric liquid crystalline (LC) emulsions by employing ceramide as an organic piezoelectric enhancer. Ceramide and fatty alcohols were coassembled in an aqueous medium to form stable multilayer LC emulsion structures, which were evaluated in terms of structural organization, rheological behavior, and piezoelectric performance. Control experiments showed that fatty alcohols alone can promote multilayer LC emulsions, providing a structural scaffold for subsequent ceramide incorporation. At a fixed fatty alcohol content of 4%, increasing the ceramide concentration enhanced the piezoelectric response up to an optimum, whereas higher ceramide loadings induced aggregation. Conversely, at a fixed ceramide content (3 wt %), increasing the fatty alcohol content improved both the cream-like texture and the piezoelectric output by stabilizing ceramide dispersion within the multilayer LC architecture. Consequently, the observed piezoelectric response arises from the high dipole moment of ceramide and is amplified by the multilayer LC emulsion architecture, which promotes collective dipole alignment and deformation-induced polarization change. In a clinical evaluation, the optimized formulation improved dermal density and skin elasticity. Overall, this work demonstrates, to the best of our knowledge, a self-powered cosmetic formulation that harnesses ceramide-based organic piezoelectricity, providing a promising platform for next-generation skin-functional cosmetic technologies.
Jang et al. (2026) studied this question.