As an electromechanical coupling
between strain gradients and polarization,
flexoelectricity is largely enhanced at the nanoscale. However, directly
observing the evolution of flexoelectric fields at the nanoscale usually
suffers from the difficulty of producing strain gradients and probing
electrical responses simultaneously. Here, we introduce nanocracks
in SrTiO
3, Ba
0.67
Sr
0.33
TiO
3, and TiO
2 samples and apply continuously
varying mechanical loading to them, and as a result, huge strain gradients
appear at the crack tip and result in a significant flexoelectric
effect. Then, using atomic force microscopy, we successfully measure
the evolution of flexoelectricity around the crack tips. For the case
of SrTiO
3, the maximum induced electric
field reaches 11 kV/m due to the tensile load increasing. The proposed
method provides a reliable way to identify the significance of the
flexoelectric effect. It may also open a new avenue for the study
of flexoelectricity involving multiple physics phenomena including
flexoelectronics, the flexo-photovoltaic effect, and others.
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