On the electromechanical effect in bones

A new technique to measure the inverse electromechanical effect is applied to five bone samples. The technique uses 2 microwave resonant cavities. When 100 V are applied to the samples, displacements lower than 0.1 /spl Aring/ are detected. Thermal elongation is shown to be more than 100 times greater than the electromechanical response. This may be a source of errors in other detection methods. A piezoelectric matrix is computed, based on the piezoelectric inverse effect theory. Its shape is not that of hexagonal polar symmetry. The coefficients' range is 2.6/spl middot/10 to 3.8/spl middot/10/sup -14/ C/N.<
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