Application of nonlinear dynamics in the study of ferroelectric materials

Abstract

The dielectric nonlinear properties of ferroelectric materials are the main reason for their technical application. There is a wide variety of materials, e.g. liquid crystals, thin layers and even bulk-materials, that have these properties. One problem that must be solved before the technical application is to determine these properties to forecast the dynamical behavior. However, so far these parameters were determined in the case of zero excitation. This is a draw-back, because for the application of ferroelectric materials the large signal behavior is important. We want to solve a new way for determining the dynamical nonlinear properties of ferroelectric materials. We present a simple dynamical system, the dielectric nonlinear series resonance circuit, that can be used for studying the large signal behavior of the mentioned materials. With the help of a macroscopic model which contains the linear and nonlinear material-coefficients and a method that we developed recently, these parameters can be determined from experimentally recorded time-series.