Flexural Electromechanical Coupling: A Nanoscale Emergent Property of Boron Nitride Bilayers

The symmetry properties of atomically thin boron nitride (BN) monolayers endow them with piezoelectric properties, whereas the bulk parent crystal of stacked BN layers is not piezoelectric. This suggests potential for unusual electromechanical properties in the few layer regime. In this work, we explore this regime and discover that a bilayer consisting of two BN monolayers exhibits a strong mechanical coupling between curvature and electric fields. Using a mechanical model with parameters obtained from density functional theory, we find that these bilayers amplify in-plane piezoelectric displacements by exceedingly large factors on the order of 10(3)-10(4). We find that this type of electromechanical coupling is an emergent nanoscale property that occurs only for the case of two stacked BN monolayers.