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Updated: May 10, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Vibrational origin of the thermal stability in the highly distorted α-quartz-type material GeO2: an experimental and
Guillaume Fraysse1, Adrien Lignie, Patrick Hermet
1Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier (ICGM), UMR 5253 CNRS-UM2-ENSCM-UM1, équipe C2M, Université Montpellier II, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France. Guillaume.Fraysse@univ-lille1.fr
Abstract:
We report an experimental and theoretical vibrational study of the high-performance piezoelectric GeO2 material. Polarized and variable-temperature Raman spectroscopic measurements on high-quality, water-free, flux-grown α-quartz GeO2 single crystals combined with state-of-the-art first-principles calculations allow the controversies on the mode symmetry assignment to be solved, the nature of the vibrations to be described in detail, and the origin of the high thermal stability of this material to be explained. The low-degree of dynamic disorder at high-temperature, which makes α-GeO2 one of the most promising piezoelectric materials for extreme temperature applications, is found to originate from the absence of a libration mode of the GeO4 tetrahedra.
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