We have studied the potential induced by lateral surface superlattices deposited on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure as a function of bias and orientation of the gates. By using the gates to null the total potential, we extracted the contribution to this potential in the absence of gate bias. Its angular dependence shows that it is dominated by strain from the gates coupled to the electrons by the piezoelectric effect. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.