Bend a diamond membrane about 5 micrometres thick, and it generates roughly 70 millivolts at just 1.4% bending strain, a voltage coefficient of 82.2 millivolts-meters per newton, according to a study published March 18, 2026, in Science Advances.

That number matters because it beats established piezoelectric materials like barium titanate, a benchmark researchers didn't expect a diamond to touch.

For more than 100 years, textbooks classified diamond as strictly........

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