RESUMEN
Antiferroelectrics are essential ingredients for the widely applied piezoelectric and ferroelectric materials: the most common ferroelectric, lead zirconate titanate is an alloy of the ferroelectric lead titanate and the antiferroelectric lead zirconate. Antiferroelectrics themselves are useful in large digital displacement transducers and energy-storage capacitors. Despite their technological importance, the reason why materials become antiferroelectric has remained allusive since their first discovery. Here we report the results of a study on the lattice dynamics of the antiferroelectric lead zirconate using inelastic and diffuse X-ray scattering techniques and the Brillouin light scattering. The analysis of the results reveals that the antiferroelectric state is a 'missed' incommensurate phase, and that the paraelectric to antiferroelectric phase transition is driven by the softening of a single lattice mode via flexoelectric coupling. These findings resolve the mystery of the origin of antiferroelectricity in lead zirconate and suggest an approach to the treatment of complex phase transitions in ferroics.
RESUMEN
In this paper the electrostrictive properties above T(εmax), represented by the field-related M and polarization-related Q coefficients, have been reported for Pb(Zr(1-x)Ti(x))O(3) ceramics with x = 0.03-0.10. Among M(11)(T) and Q(11)(T) dependences, those found for Pb(Zr(0.94)Ti(0.06))O(3) have been clearly distinguished. In this case, the Q(11)(T) dependence is linear in the whole temperature range above T(εmax). Experimental and theoretical analysis of the M(11)(T) dependences has shown that the phase transition to the ferroelectric phase in Pb(Zr(0.94)Ti(0.06))O(3) ceramics seems to be of the displacive type.