Buckling and vibration of flexoelectric nanofilms subjected to mechanical loads

Piezoelectric nanofilms (PNFs) are widely used in microelectromechanical systems, buckling commonly occurs when subjected to compressive mechanical loads in their applications. In this paper we comprehensively study the flexoelectric effect on the buckling and vibrational behaviors of PNFs. The results from the analytical solutions indicate the significance of the flexoelectricity. The critical buckling loads and natural frequency are enhanced by the flexoelectricity. Analytical results indicate that the critical buckling load is not only influenced by the thickness of the PNFs, but also by the in-plane aspect ratio. When the thickness of the PNFs is several micrometers, the critical buckling load predicted by the present model is much higher than the prediction by the classical piezoelectric plate model. And the natural frequency calculated by the current model is much higher than that obtained by the classical piezoelectricity plate theory when the thickness is several tens of nanometers.