Elastic and Piezoelectric Constants of Potassium Niobate Studied by Brillouin Spectroscopy

Abstract

In this paper we present potassium niobate elastic and piezoelectric constants measurements. These experiments have been performed by Brillouin spectroscopy which gives a direct access to the elastic coefficient by measuring the acoustic velocity. To avoid problems related to the angle precision on Brillouin spectroscopy, three different samples corresponding to X-cut, Y-cut and Z-cut have been used. The complete set of elastic constants is given and results are compared with those obtained previously by other authors. A discussion around the accuracy of the results is developed to explain discrepancy between previous results given in the literature.