Spontaneous long and short-range ferroelectric ordering in Pb0.55La0.30TiO3 ceramics

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the temperature dependence of short and long-range ferroelectric ordering in Pb0.55La0.30TiO3 relaxor composition. High-resolution x-ray powder diffraction measurements revealed a clear spontaneous macroscopic cubic-to-tetragonal phase transition in the PLT relaxor sample at ∼60 K below the maximum of the dielectric constant peak (Tm). Indeed, the x-ray diffraction (XRD) data showed that at 300 K (above Tm but below the Burns temperature, TB) the long-range order structure corresponds to a macroscopic cubic symmetry, space group number 221 (Pm-3m), whereas the data collected at 20 K revealed a macroscopic tetragonal symmetry, space group number 99 (P4mm) with c/a=1.0078, that is comparable to that of a normal ferroelectric. These results show that for samples with tetragonal composition, the long-range ferroelectric order may be recovered spontaneously at cryogenics temperatures, in contrast to ferroelectric samples with rhombohedral symmetry. On the other hand, x-ray absorption spectroscopy investigations intriguingly revealed the existence of local tetragonal disorder around Ti atoms for temperatures far below Tm and above TB, for which the sample presents macroscopic tetragonal and cubic symmetries, respectively.