Temperature evolution of central peaks and effect of electric field in relaxor ferroelectric 0.83Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–0.17PbTiO3 single crystals

Abstract

Relaxor ferroelectric 0.83Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–0.17PbTiO3 (PMN–17PT) single crystals were studied by Brillouin scattering to investigate the role of polar nanoregions (PNRs) with intermediate random fields (RFs). Upon cooling, the central peak began to appear at the Burns temperature (TB) of ∼600 K, indicating the existence of polarization relaxations induced by PNRs. The fitting performed using the equation of stretched slowing down at the inverse relaxation time revealed that the slowing down of PNRs was suppressed in PMN–17PT compared with that in PMN–56PT owing to the increase in the strength of RFs. At room temperature, the splitting of the longitudinal acoustic mode at 1.6 kV/cm was observed owing to the coexistence of the macrodomain formed by the external electric field along the [100] axis and the nanodomains formed by RFs. The appearance of the transverse acoustic mode at 3.2 kV/cm indicates the field-induced rhombohedral-to-tetragonal phase.