Biological membranes are capacitors that can be charged by applying a field across the membrane. The charges on the capacitor exert a force on the membrane that leads to electrostriction, i.e. a thinning of the membrane. Since the force is quadratic in voltage, negative and positive voltage have an identical influence on the physics of symmetric membranes. However, this is not the case for a me...

Giant electrostrictors based on oxygen deficient fluorites are of great technological and scientific interest due to their unusual electromechanical properties. It is, however, still not clear whether solid solutions between different can affect the electrostrictive In this work, we investigated response four 10 mol% gadolinium-doped ceria (GDC10) 8mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (8YSZ), corres...

A Ginzburg-Landau theory is presented to investigate solvation effects in near-critical polar fluid binary mixtures. Concentration dependence of the dielectric constant gives rise to a shell region around a charged particle within which solvation occurs preferentially. As the critical point is approached, the concentration has a long-range Ornstein-Zernike tail representing strong critical elec...

Parallel-plate capacitors based on ferroelectric thin films are considered as high density capacitors and varactors. Due to the small thickness of the ferroelectric films, typically less than 1.0 μm, high electric fields are generated even at relatively low voltages inducing piezoelectric effect associated with electrostriction. This induced piezoelectric effect has negative impact on ferroelec...

A model is presented of the A transition in superfluid helium in which fluctuations near the transition are approximated by distinct regions of normal fluid and superfluid. The macroscopic viscosity of such a medium is computed. The ion mobility is also computed, taking into account a region of normal fluid around the ion induced by electrostriction. The results are, for the viscosity, TJ, TJ t...