The property of some materials to store a permanent electric field, by analogy with the storage of a magnetic field by ferromagnetic materials. The BaTiO3 in a perovskite structure Eric Weisstein's World of Chemistry is used to create ferroelectrics in the lab under the imposition of a strong electric field which permanently creates electric dipoles. The perovskite structure Eric Weisstein's World of Chemistry is amenable to this treatment because the Ti atom is slightly too small to come into bonding contact with the surrounding oxygen atoms, and can "slip" so that it touched only three of them, creating a net dipole. Striking a ferroelectric will cause the generation of an extremely high voltage (but low current) two-peaked current (one for the compression and one for the rebound).
Ferrielectricity, Ferromagnetism
References
Jona, F. and Shirane, G. Ferroelectric Crystals. New York: Dover, 1993.
Weisstein, E. W. "Books about Ferroelectricity." http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/books/Ferroelectricity.html.
