The core of this process is due to using ceramics with special properties called piezo-electric ceramics.  Fundamentally, these are materials that expand and contract when exposed to an electrical signal, or alternately produce electricity when compressed or pulled in tension. This phenomenon originally observed with Quartz by Pierre and Jacques Curie.  Below is a photo of Pierre with a quartz piezo-electroscope which takes advantage of the piezo-electric effect to measure rays emitted from Radium.

First of all, a turbine alone does not produce electrical energy. A turbine is a device that uses the thermal energy (i.e. the pressure and temperature) of a working fluid, generally water in the form of steam, to produce mechanical energy. In a typical thermal or nuclear power station, the turbine uses high-pressure steam to turn a set of blades attached to a shaft. It’s much like, although not identical to, the wind blowing on a pinwheel, but a little more complicated and efficient.

The generator is what turns mechanical energy into electrical. A generator consists of a magnet moving past a conductor. In a typical industrial setting, the shaft from the turbine is also connected to a generator. This shaft, spinning from the work of the turbine, causes a large electromagnet (called the rotor) attached to it to spin inside a large collection of conductors (called the stator). Electrical energy is produced and sent to a waiting world.

It is important to note that a generator is just an electric motor where you spin it to produce electricity, rather than electricity producing rotation.

Typically, the set-up described, that of a turbine and a generator connected via one large shaft, is called a turbogenerator.

In a hydroelectric plant, water is used to turn a large set of blades connected to the generator in a similar set-up, although they tend to be smaller in size.

A wind turbine would work in a very similar way, with the blades connected to a generator through a gearbox; the wind-powered blades don’t spin fast enough on their own.

The piezoelectric effect is exhibited by a number of naturally-occurring crystals: quartz, tourmaline and sodium potassium tartrate. A crystal exhibits the piezoelectric effect if its structure  havs no centre of symmetry. A stress (tensile or compressive) applied to such a crystal will alter the separation between the positive and negative charge sites in each elementary cell leading to a net polarization at the crystal surface. The effect is practically linear, i.e. the polarization varies directly with the applied stress, and direction-dependent, so that compressive and tensile stresses will generate electric fields and hence voltages of opposite polarity. It's also reciprocal, so that if the crystal is exposed to an electric field, it will experience an elastic strain causing its length to increase or decrease according to the field polarity.

See refference: http://www.morgantechnicalceramics.com/media/4126/chapter2.pdf