General solution for Eshelby's problem of 2D arbitrarily shaped piezoelectric inclusions

Eshelby's problem of piezoelectric inclusions arises sometimes in exploiting the electromechanical coupling effect in piezoelectric media. For example, it intervenes in the nanostructure design of strained semiconductor devices involving strain-induced quantum dot (QD) and quantum wire (QWR) growth. Using the extended Stroh formalism, the present work gives a general analytical solution for Eshelby's problem of two-dimensional arbitrarily shaped piezoelectric inclusions. The key step toward obtaining this general solution is the derivation of a simple and compact boundary integral expression for the eigenfunctions in the extended Stroh formalism applied to Eshelby's problem. The simplicity and compactness of the boundary integral expression derived make it much less difficult to analytically tackle Eshelby's piezoelectric problem for a large variety of non-elliptical inclusions. In the present work, explicit analytical solutions are obtained and detailed for all polygonal inclusions and for the inclusions characterized by Jordan's curves and Laurent's polynomials. By considering the piezoelectric material GaAs (110), the analytical solutions provided are illustrated numerically to verify the coincidence between different expressions, and to clarify the jump across the boundary of the inclusion and the singularity around the corner of the inclusion. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.