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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena is extremely common in inorganic materials, and nearly ubiquitous in biological systems, underpinning phenomena and devices ranging from SONAR to cardiac activity and hearing. This paper briefly summarizes the Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) approach, referred to as Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM), for probing electromechanical coupling on the nanometer scales, and delineates some existing and emerging applications to probe local structure and functionality in inorganic ferroelectrics, calcified and connective tissues, and complex biosystems based on electromechanical detection.