Radiation pressure and photothermal forces have been previously used to optically actuate micro/nanomechanical structures fabricated from semiconductor piezoelectric materials such as gallium arsenide (GaAs). In these materials, coupling of the photovoltaic and piezoelectric properties has not been fully explored and leads to a new type of optical actuation that we call the photovoltaic-piezoelectric effect (PVPZ). We demonstrate this effect by electrically measuring, via the direct piezoelectric effect, the optically induced strain in a novel torsional resonator. The micron-scale torsional resonator is fabricated from a lattice-matched single-crystal molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown GaAs photodiode heterostructure. We find that the strain depends on the product of the electro-optic responsivity and piezoelectric constant of GaAs. The photovoltaic-piezoelectric effect has important potential applications, such as in the development of configurable optical circuits, which can be used in neuromorphic photonic chips, processing of big data with deep learning and the development of quantum circuits.

辐射压力和光热力先前已用于光学驱动由砷化镓（GaAs）等半导体压电材料制成的微/纳米机械结构。在这些材料中，光伏和压电特性的耦合尚未得到充分探索，并导致了一种新型的光学驱动，我们称之为光伏压电效应（PVPZ）。我们通过直接压电效应对新型扭转谐振器中的光致应变进行电测量来证明这种效应。微米级扭转谐振器由晶格匹配单晶分子束外延 (MBE) 生长的砷化镓光电二极管异质结构制成。我们发现应变取决于 GaAs 的电光响应率和压电常数的乘积。光伏压电效应具有重要的潜在应用，例如可用于神经形态光子芯片的可配置光学电路的开发、深度学习的大数据处理以及量子电路的开发。