Ren's team's paper in Science.

A groundbreaking achievement‌ from a collaborative team led by Ren Xiaobing, researcher at the Yongjiang Laboratory and visiting professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU), was published online on Jan 29 in Science.

The team enhanced the key performance metric – the piezoelectric coefficient (d₃₃) – of a classic, low-cost polycrystalline piezoelectric ceramic by more than tenfold, creating a super piezoelectric ceramic.

It also pioneered a new paradigm for active piezoelectric devices, enabling materials to operate stably at their performance pinnacle. Reviewers hailed the study as a revolutionary discovery with the potential to reshape the technological landscape in high-end sensing, precision actuation, and intelligent interaction.

Piezoelectric materials are among the key functional materials of the intelligent era, serving as the core medium for converting mechanical and electrical signals. They form the foundational architecture of various precision smart devices, enabling instant fingerprint recognition on smartphones and the capture of internal echoes by ultrasound probes in hospitals, which rely on them to convert mechanical or acoustic signals into electrical signals. They also enable automatic focusing in high-end camera lenses and nanometer-scale motion in lithography machines through precise actuation.

A higher value of d₃₃ indicates superior electromechanical coupling performance. However, for over 70 years, progress in this metric has nearly stalled.

Since the invention of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) polycrystalline ceramics in the 1950s, performance remained confined to the 200–600 pC/N range. Relaxor piezoelectric single crystals emerged in the 1980s, achieving d₃₃ values of around 2,000 pC/N, but their costs rival that of gold, and their poor stability and extreme fragility limit large-scale applications.

The new ceramic developed by Ren's team is based on an inexpensive PZT polycrystalline material but operates in a unique active mode. Its d₃₃ reaches up to ‌6850 pC/N‌, which is not only 10 to 30 times higher than traditional piezoelectric ceramics but also significantly surpasses all known top-tier single crystals.

This breakthrough marks the birth of a new class of super piezoelectric ceramics that combine ultra-high performance with strong engineering applicability. These are expected to provide critical material support for next-generation technologies such as micro-robots, cell-level ultrasound imaging, and high-fidelity haptic interaction. Moreover, the new paradigm of active piezoelectric devices could offer profound inspiration for the broader field of functional materials.