Polymorphic transition and nucleation pathway of barium dititanate (BaTi₂O₅) during crystallization from undercooled...

The nucleation pathway plays an important role in vitrification, preparation of glass-ceramic composites and synthesis of metastable materials. In this paper, we studied the nucleation pathway of a novel ferroelectric BaTi₂O₅ (BT2) during crystallization from undercooled liquid by aerodynamic levitation (ADL) containerless processing and structural analysis. An interesting polymorphic transition of BT2 regulated by the undercooling was observed during the crystallization process: the ferroelectric monoclinic phase (γ-BT2) was fabricated at low undercoolings and the paraelectric orthorhombic metastable phase (β-BT2) was obtained from hypercooled liquid. This polymorphic transition phenomenon corresponds to a non-classical nucleation pathway: metastable β-BT2 preferentially nucleates from undercooled melt and γ-BT2 is generated from β phase by solid-state phase transition. The two-step nucleation pathway stems from the structural heredity between the undercooled liquid and crystals. A stronger structural homology exists between the undercooled melt and β-BT2 than γ-BT2 based on diffraction data and atomic configurations analysis. This structural homology coupled with nucleation barrier calculation was used to elucidate the non-classical nucleation pathway of BT2 crystallization: the similarity of the structural unit (Ti-O polyhedra) between the undercooled liquid and the metastable β-BT2 reduces the nucleation barrier and contributes to the preferential precipitation of β-like clusters. This work reveals the formation route of BT2 from cooling melt, which not only benefits the synthesis and application of this novel functional material but also provides a guideline of the crystallization process of titanates from melt at atomic level.