Surface Domain Structures and Mesoscopic Phase Transition in Relaxor Ferroelectrics |
| |
Authors: | Andrei Kholkin Anna Morozovska Dmitry Kiselev Igor Bdikin Brian Rodriguez Pingping Wu Alexei Bokov Zuo‐Guang Ye Brahim Dkhil Long‐Qing Chen Marija Kosec Sergei V Kalinin |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Department of Ceramic and Glass Engineering & CICECO, University of Aveiro, 3810–193 Aveiro, Portugal;2. Institute of Semiconductor Physics, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 03028 Kiev, Ukraine;3. Centre for Mechanical Technology and Automation, University of Aveiro, 3810–193 Aveiro, Portugal;4. Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland;5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA;6. Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada;7. Laboratoire Structure, Propriétés et Modélisation des Solides, UMR CNRS 8580, Ecole Centrale Paris, 92295 Chatenay‐Malabry Cedex, France;8. Jozef Stefan Institute, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia;9. The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and Materials Sciences and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 |
| |
Abstract: | Relaxor ferroelectrics are a prototypical example of ferroic systems in which interplay between atomic disorder and order parameters gives rise to emergence of unusual properties, including non‐exponential relaxations, memory effects, polarization rotations, and broad spectrum of bias‐ and temperature‐induced phase transitions. Despite more than 40 years of extensive research following the original discovery of ferroelectric relaxors by the Smolensky group, the most basic aspect of these materials – the existence and nature of order parameter – has not been understood thoroughly. Using extensive imaging and spectroscopic studies by variable‐temperature and time resolved piezoresponse force microscopy, we find that the observed mesoscopic behavior is consistent with the presence of two effective order parameters describing dynamic and static parts of polarization, respectively. The static component gives rise to rich spatially ordered systems on the ~100 nm length scales, and are only weakly responsive to electric field. The surface of relaxors undergoes a mesoscopic symmetry breaking leading to the freezing of polarization fluctuations and shift of corresponding transition temperature. |
| |
Keywords: | ferroelectrics relaxors piezoresponse force microscopy phase transition ferroelectric domains disorder |
|
|