Campus Units
Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2016
Journal or Book Title
Physical Review B
Volume
93
Issue
174114
First Page
1
Last Page
9
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.93.174114
Abstract
lectric fields are known to favor long-range polar order through the aligning of electric dipoles in relation to Coulomb's force. Therefore, it would be surprising to observe a disordered polar state induced from an ordered state by electric fields. Here we show such an unusual phenomenon in a polycrystalline oxide where electric fields induce a ferroelectric-to-relaxor phase transition. The nonergodic relaxor phase with disordered dipoles appears as an intermediate state under electric fields during polarization reversal of the ferroelectric phase. Using the phenomenological theory, the underlying mechanism for this unexpected behavior can be attributed to the slow kinetics of the ferroelectric-to-relaxor phase transition, as well as its competition against domain switching during electric reversal. The demonstrated material could also serve as a model system to study the transient stages in first-order phase transitions; the slow kinetics does not require the use of sophisticated ultrafast tools.
Copyright Owner
American Physical Society
Copyright Date
2016
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Guo, Hanzheng; Liu, Xiaoming; Xue, Fei; Chen, Long-Qing; Hong, Wei; and Tan, Xiaoli, "Disrupting long-range polar order with an electric field" (2016). Materials Science and Engineering Publications. 217.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/mse_pubs/217
Included in
Materials Science and Engineering Commons, Signal Processing Commons, Systems Engineering and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Commons
Comments
This is an article from Physical Review B 93 (2016): doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.93.174114. Posted with permission.