Strain gradients break inversion symmetry and induce flexoelectric polarization in otherwise nonpolar materials, overcoming one of the major constraints imposed on crystalline symmetries by conventional piezoelectricity and ferroelectricity. Flexoelectricity thus presents a new paradigm for manipulating dielectric polarization and associated phenomena, and in recent years it has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer a wide range of materials, structures, and devices, including piezoelectric actuators, field effect transistors, and photodetectors. With rapid advances in characterization techniques and computational algorithms, the gap between theory and experiment is being bridged, and we are gaining unprecedented microscopic understanding of the flexoelectric effect. This enables not only design, development, and optimization of flexoelectric materials, structures and devices, but also provides new insight into novel polar topologies such as vortices, antivortices, and skymions. The symposium intends to bring together materials scientists, condensed matter physicists, electrical engineers, and solid mechanicians working on materials synthesis, device fabrication, modeling, as well as characterization aspects of flexoelectricity to survey the state of the art, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations. Abstracts in both fundamental and applied aspects of flexoelectricity are solicited, and potential topics of interest are listed in the following.

2D materials dielectric properties electrical properties ferroelectricity scanning probe microscopy (SPM)