压电电子效应 是利用压电电势作为“门”电压对电荷载流子的传输特性进行调整和控制，可以用于制备新型的电子器件。压电电子学的基本原理是由佐治亚理工学院的王中林教授在2007年提出来的。 基于这个效应，已经制备了一系列的电子器件，包括压电电场栅控的场效应晶体管, 压电电场控制的二极管, 应变传感器, 力/流量传感器, 混合 场效应晶体管, 压电 逻辑门电路, 机电 存储器, 等等. 压电电子器件被认为是一个新的半导体器件种类。 压电电子学在传感器，人机交互技术，微机电系统，纳米机器人，以及有源柔性电子学等领域都可能具有重大的应用前景。

Piezotronics effect is using the piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) created in materials with piezoelectricity as a “gate” voltage to tune/control the charge carrier transport properties for fabricating new devices. Neil A Downie showed how simple it was to build simple demonstrations on a macro-scale using a sandwich of piezoelectric material and carbon piezoresistive material to make an FET-like amplifying device and put it in a book of science projects for students in 2006. The fundamental principle of piezotronics was introduced by Prof. Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007 . A series of electronic devices have been demonstrated based on this effect, including piezopotential gated field-effect transistor, piezopotential gated diode, strain sensors, force/flow sensors, hybrid field-effect transistor, piezotronic logic gates, electromechanical memories, etc. Piezotronic devices are regarded as a new semiconductor-device category. Piezotronics is likely to have important applications in sensor, human-silicon technology interfacing, MEMS, nanorobotics and active flexible electronics.