Piezoelectricity of mechanically oriented S‐elastomers

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Ferroelectricity and thus piezoelectricity are well known features of low molar mass chiral smectic C (Sc*) liquid crystals. We present a new technique to orientate macroscopically the director as well as the smectic layers of a Sc*‐polymer network by applying a suitable mechanical field. The uniform orientation of the network film is checked by X‐ray diffraction. According to the phase symmetry electromechanical measurements indicate the existence of a polar axis of the network and the direct as well as the inverse piezoelectric effect is demonstrated.