Glass-ferroic composite caused by the crystallization of ferroic glass

Abstract

We report a glass-ferroic composite (in short ``glass-ferroic'') in ferroic materials, an analog of the composite of glassy and crystalline phases (glass-crystal composite, e.g., semicrystalline polymer). The formation of glass-ferroic (i.e., the existence of residual ferroic glass) stems from a time-dependent crystallization of the ferroic glass. Moreover, glass-ferroics show two types of transition characteristics depending on the thermal hysteresis of crystallization transition as exemplified in $\mathrm{T}{\mathrm{i}}_{48.7}\mathrm{N}{\mathrm{i}}_{51.3}$ and $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{b}}_{0.87}\mathrm{L}{\mathrm{a}}_{0.13}\mathrm{Z}{\mathrm{r}}_{0.4}\mathrm{T}{\mathrm{i}}_{0.6}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$. Based on experimental results, a generic phase diagram is established to include all ferroic states, i.e., ferroic crystal, ferroic glass, and glass-ferroic. Being the third class of ferroic materials, glass-ferroics may open a new avenue for achieving novel properties and designing ferroic phase-change memory devices.