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Published on: October 31, 2019
Phase transition of the uniaxial disordered ferroelectric Sr(0.61)Ba(0.39)Nb(2)O(6)
S N Gvasaliya1, R A Cowley, L I Ivleva
1Laboratory for Solid State Physics, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
We report a neutron scattering study of a ferroelectric phase transition in Sr0.61Ba0.39Nb2O6 (SBN-61). The ferroelectric polarization is along the crystallographic c-axis but the transverse acoustic branch propagating along the 〈1, 1, 0〉 direction does not show any anomaly associated with this transition. We find no evidence for a soft transverse optic phonon. We do, however, observe elastic diffuse scattering. The intensity of this scattering increases as the sample is cooled from a temperature well above the phase transition. The susceptibility associated with this diffuse scattering follows the anomaly of the dielectric permittivity of SBN-61 well. Below Tc the shape of this scattering is consistent with the scattering expected from ferroelectric domain walls. Our results suggest that despite apparent chemical disorder SBN-61 behaves as a classic order-disorder uniaxial ferroelectric with critical fluctuations in the range <10(-11) s.
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