Temperature dependence of ferrobielastic switching in quartz

Using the piezoelectric effect, the variation of coercive stress with temperature for ferrobielastic switching in synthetic quartz crystals has been measured under unaxial load applied in a direction favoring Dauphiné twinning. It is found that the coercive stress decreases with increasing temperature from about 4×10⁸ Pa at room temperature to less than 10⁷ Pa near 300°C.