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Updated: Sep 11, 2025
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Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
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Emergent topological polarization textures in relaxor ferroelectrics
Maksim Eremenko1,2,3, Victor Krayzman4,5, Semen Gorfman6
1Materials Measurement Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA. eremenkom@ornl.gov.
Nature Communications
|August 13, 2025
Summary
Relaxor ferroelectrics exhibit complex polar textures, revealing self-organized swirling polarization with half-skyrmion (meron) vortices. These topological textures, driven by chemical disorder, offer new avenues for advanced dielectric and ferroelectric materials.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Solid-State Chemistry
Background:
- Relaxor ferroelectrics are crucial for actuators and sensors.
- The origin of their broadband dielectric response is linked to polar heterogeneities.
- Understanding these structures is key to optimizing material properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the 3D mesoscale polarization structure in PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3-PbTiO3 relaxor ferroelectrics.
- To challenge existing models of polar nanoregions.
- To elucidate the role of chemical disorder in stabilizing polarization textures.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a unified, multimodal structural refinement framework.
- Simultaneously fitted X-ray and neutron total scattering data.
- Incorporated X-ray absorption spectra and diffuse scattering analyses.
Main Results:
- Reconstructed 3D mesoscale polarization maps revealing self-organized swirling polarization textures.
- Identified half-skyrmion (meron) vortices within these textures.
- Correlated vortex cores with local charge and strain gradients from compositional heterogeneities.
Conclusions:
- The observed textures challenge models of independent polar nanoregions.
- Chemical disorder, via depolarizing and strain fields, stabilizes topological vortex textures.
- These findings provide a pathway for engineering novel dielectric and ferroelectric functionalities.
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