Structural Lattice Distortion Research Articles

Porous High-Entropy Oxide Anode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries: Preparation, Characterization, and Applications.

High-entropy oxides (HEOs), as a new type of single-phase solid solution with a multi-component design, have shown great potential when they are used as anodes in lithium-ion batteries due to four kinds of effects (thermodynamic high-entropy effect, the structural lattice distortion effect, the kinetic slow diffusion effect, and the electrochemical "cocktail effect"), leading to excellent cycling stability. Although the number of articles on the study of HEO materials has increased significantly, the latest research progress in porous HEO materials in the lithium-ion battery field has not been systematically summarized. This review outlines the progress made in recent years in the design, synthesis, and characterization of porous HEOs and focuses on phase transitions during the cycling process, the role of individual elements, and the lithium storage mechanisms disclosed through some advanced characterization techniques. Finally, the future outlook of HEOs in the energy storage field is presented, providing some guidance for researchers to further improve the design of porous HEOs.

Prediction of lattice distortion and mechanical behavior of tetragonal phase (Bi0.2Na0.2Ba0.2Sr0.2Ca0.2)TiO3 high-entropy perovskite with A-site disorder from first-principles calculations

High-entropy perovskite ceramics have drawn widespread attention as their excellent physical properties. Herein, the high-entropy (Bi0.2Na0.2Ba0.2Sr0.2Ca0.2)TiO3 (BNBSCT) perovskite is selected as case study. The distorted structure and mechanical behavior as well as the effect of pressure are comprehensively studied through implementing first-principles calculations in conjunction with special quasi-random structure. The results reveal the atomic random distribution and size different cause serious lattice distortion within the BNBSCT structure, and the pseudo-intralayer distortion is significantly smaller than the interlayer distortion. Further studies of the mechanical properties indicate that the high-entropy BNBSCT perovskite is mechanical stable, especially larger elastic parameters imply the larger resistance against elastic deformation in comparison with Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3. Compared to the rule of mixture, the higher resistance to volume deformation and crack propagation of BNBSCT suggests the strengthening of high-entropy perovskite presumably due to lattice distortion in structure. Increasing pressure leads to decrease in lattice parameter and volume of structure, then increases the degree of lattice distortion, elastic constants and elastic moduli, as well the degree of lattice distortion. Moreover, the ductility and fracture toughness are also enhanced, though the elastic anisotropy is slightly larger. This work provides a new insight into the high-entropy perovskite under high pressure, which will contribute to the further research and application of high-entropy materials.

In situ reaction synthesis, microstructure and thermomechanical properties of novel medium-entropy (Ti,V,Nb,Ta)2AlC ceramics

High- and medium-entropy (HE and ME) materials have attracted considerable interest in recent years due to the advantages of designable components and tunable structures with modifiable physicochemical performances. Herein, a dense equiatomic quaternary (Ti,V,Nb,Ta)2AlC solid solution, or denoted as a medium-entropy MAX phase, was fabricated by in-situ reaction in hot-pressing sintering process using easily available elemental powders as raw materials. X-ray diffraction with its Rietveld refinement analysis, scanning electron microscope and high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscope equipped with energy-dispersed spectrometer analysis identify the phase composition and crystal structure of the novel ME-M2AlC (Ti,V,Nb,Ta)2AlC phase. Especially, the atomic-resolution HAADF images directly prove the mutual solution of four metallic elements of the ME (Ti,V,Nb,Ta)2AlC phase. Both the flexural strength and Vickers hardness are enhanced compared with the reported individual components, and the strengthening and hardening results largely benefit from solid-solution effect with lattice distortion in structure. The fracture toughness has not been enhanced due to the lack of effective toughening mechanism. Furthermore, the electrical conductivity of ME (Ti,V,Nb,Ta)2AlC ceramic is distinctly decreased as a result of the increasing carrier lattice scattering and point defect scattering, which is caused by severe lattice distortion. Similarly, the scattering effect of solid solutions is also responsible for the lower thermal conductivity. It is worth noting that size disorder parameter (δsize) is a more effective criterion to evaluate the reduced thermal conductivity than the ideal mixing configurational entropy itself. As a result, applying the medium- and high-entropy design to the MAX phases with chemical and structural diversity can provide a large compositional space with corresponding large range of unexpected performances, which is highly anticipated.

Wide-band blue-emitting in Ce3+ doped Ca2YZr2Al3O12 garnet-type phosphor designed via local structural lattice distortion and synthesized in nonreducing atmosphere

It is of great significance to explore blue photoluminescent phosphor for white light-emitting diodes excited by near-ultraviolet chip. However, it is very challenging to prepare efficient blue luminescence in phosphor by an unsophisticated synthesis process. In this work, a series of blue-emitting Ca 2 Y 1-x Zr 2 Al 3 O 12 : xCe 3+ phosphors are designed via local lattice distortion and synthesized in nonreducing atmosphere. The crystal structure of samples and the coordination environment of Ce 3+ have been investigated in detail by X-ray diffraction and Rietveld refinement method. The wide-band blue emission peaking at 460 nm is attributed to a relaxed crystal field strength. Based on dodecahedron distortion caused by unequal increase of Ce–O bond length, the wavelength of blue color luminescence tuning can be realized from 459 nm to 472 nm. In addition to the concentration quenching effect, the fluorescent lifetimes, thermal quenching effect, the internal quantum efficiency, CIE chromaticity coordinates and related mechanisms of samples have also been studied systematically. Using the representative sample with other tricolor phosphors on a 365 nm chip, a prototype LED device with chromaticity point of (0.394, 0.384) and high CRI (93.5) at CCT of 3755 K is fabricated. All the results suggest that Ca 2 Y 1-x Zr 2 Al 3 O 12 : xCe 3+ phosphors can be conducted as potential alternative of blue-emitting phosphor for near-ultraviolet pumped white light-emitting diodes.

Stripe-yz magnetic order in the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet KCeS2

Yb- and Ce-based delafossites were recently identified as effective spin-1/2 antiferromagnets on the triangular lattice. Several Yb-based systems, such as NaYbO2, NaYbS2, and NaYbSe2, exhibit no long-range order down to the lowest measured temperatures and therefore serve as putative candidates for the realization of a quantum spin liquid. However, their isostructural Ce-based counterpart KCeS2 exhibits magnetic order below T N = 400 mK, which was so far identified only in thermodynamic measurements. Here we reveal the magnetic structure of this long-range ordered phase using magnetic neutron diffraction. We show that it represents the so-called ‘stripe-yz’ type of antiferromagnetic order with spins lying approximately in the triangular-lattice planes orthogonal to the nearest-neighbor Ce–Ce bonds. No structural lattice distortions are revealed below T N, indicating that the triangular lattice of Ce3+ ions remains geometrically perfect down to the lowest temperatures. We propose an effective Hamiltonian for KCeS2, based on a fit to the results of ab initio calculations, and demonstrate that its magnetic ground state matches the experimental spin structure.

Barium Titanate Semiconductor Band Gap Characterization through Gravitationally Optimized Support Vector Regression and Extreme Learning Machine Computational Methods

Barium titanate (BaTiO3) is a class of ceramic multifunctional materials with unique thermal stability, prominent piezoelectricity constant, excellent dielectric constant, environmental friendliness, and excellent photocatalytic activities. These features have rendered barium titanate indispensable in many areas of applications such as electromechanical devices, thermistors, multilayer capacitors, and electrooptical devices. The photocatalytic activity of barium titanate semiconductor is hindered by its large band gap and high rate of charge recombination. Doping of the parent barium titanate compound for band gap tuning is challenging and consumes appreciable time and other valuable resources. This present work relates the influence of foreign material incorporation into the parent barium titanate with the corresponding energy band gap by developing extreme learning machine- (ELM-) based models and hybridization of support vector regression (SVR) with gravitational search algorithm (GSA) using the structural lattice distortion that emanated from doping as model descriptors. The developed gravitationally optimized SVR (GSVR) is characterized with a low value of mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.036 ev, 1.145 ev, and 0.122 ev, respectively. The developed GSVR model outperforms ELM-Sine and ELM-Sig models using various performance evaluators. The developed GSVR model investigates the significance of iodine and samarium incorporation on the band gap of the parent barium titanate and the attained energy gaps conform excellently to the experimentally reported values. The demonstrated precision of the developed GSVR as measured from the closeness of its estimates with the measured values provides a quick and accurate method of energy gap characterization with circumvention of experimental stress and conservation of valuable time as well as other resources.

Modeling superconducting transition temperature of doped MgB2 superconductor from structural distortion and ambient temperature resistivity measurement using hybrid intelligent approach

Improvement of superconducting properties of MgB2 superconductor becomes necessary in several medium and large scale commercial practical applications where generation of high magnetic field is of significant interest. High power cables, energy storage devices, wind turbines and magnetic resonance imaging are the potential areas of application where MgB2 superconductor with improved property is indispensable. In order to facilitate quick determination of transition temperature of MgB2 superconductor and to determine the conditions at which this superconducting property is optimal for the desired application, this present contribution hybridizes genetic algorithm (HGA) with support vector regression (SVR) machine learning to model the transition temperature of doped MgB2 superconductor using ambient room temperature resistivity (RTR), residual resistivity ratio (RRR) and structural lattice distortion (SLD) due to the incorporated dopants as descriptors. The developed HGA-SVR-RTR model that utilizes RTR as descriptor shows better performance than the proposed HGA-SVR-RRR model (that employs RRR as descriptor) and HGA-SVR-SLD model (that implements SLD as descriptors) with improvement in performance by 88.45% and 71.41%, respectively using mean absolute error (MAE) as a parameter that evaluates the model performance. The developed HGA-SVR-RTR model also outperforms the existing models such as GPR-prediction (2020), STTE model (2016) and STTE model (2014) with performance improvement of 74.85%, 74.76% and 92.96%, respectively using MAE as a yardstick for performance comparison. The developed HGA-SVR-RRR model performs better than HGA-SVR-SLD model with percentage improvement of 59.6% on the basis of MAE. The performance of the developed models would definitely facilitate cost effective search for doped MgB2 superconductor for desired application without experimental stress.

Structural distortion induced enhancement in UV-C emitting properties of Pr3+-activated La-substituted yttrium phosphates (Y1-xLaxPO4:Pr3+)

The UV-C emission with a spectral range of 200–280 nm is of paramount importance in the germicidal and medical applications for disinfection, sterilization, and deactivation of microorganisms such as bacteria and virus considering current global pandemic crisis of coronavirus (COVID-19). Such intense UV-C radiation (4.4–6.2 eV) can be often generated using Pr3+ activators (as a result of their electronic transition [Xe]4f15d1→[Xe]4f2) doped in crystalline inorganic host matrices. In this regard, Pr3+-activated rare earth phosphates have been intensively studied as a model system of UV-C emitters thus far. Here, we have prepared three different representative crystalline UV-C phosphors of YPO4:Pr3+ (tetragonal), LaPO4:Pr3+ (monoclinic), and La-substituted YPO4:Pr3+ (tetragonal), respectively, and further investigated the effect of La substitution in YPO4 crystal structures on UV-C emitting properties. The structural lattice distortion in the local environment of activator Pr3+ cations induced by La substitution indeed impacts on the UV-C emitting properties. Small amount of substitutional doping of La3+ (ca. 5 mol.%) in Y site of YPO4 enhances the UV-C emission intensity by a two-fold of magnitude recorded under 225 nm excitation (photoluminescence) and cathode ray (cathodeluminescence). This finding can provide a fundamental designing principle of inorganic phosphor materials to enhance the emitting properties of activators, directly influenced by local environment and symmetry of the crystal structures.

Temperature-insensitive piezoelectric properties of lead-free BiFeO3–BaTiO3 ceramics with high Curie temperature

Temperature-insensitive high piezoelectric strain and low strain hysteresis (Hs) with high Curie temperature (TC) are desirable for piezoelectric actuator applications. The excellent room-temperature piezoelectric performance (d33 = 309 pC/N and d33∗ = 458 pm/V) with very high TC = 482 °C have achieved in 0.67Bi1.03FeO3-0.33Ba1-xLaxTiO3 ceramics. Furthermore, a small variation in the piezoelectric strain (ΔST = 13%) in the temperature range of 25 °C–125 °C with low strain hysteresis (Hs = 12%) and a large average electrostrictive coefficient (Q33 = 0.03 m2/C4) leads to a high figure of merit for piezoelectric actuators. The structural origin of the high piezoelectric performance is related to the crystal structure morphotropic phase boundary and maximum crystal structure lattice distortion (90° ̶ αR = 0.12° and cT/aT = 1.008). While the physical origin is mainly attributed to the soft ferroelectric effect by La3+ as donor doping on Ba2+-site that significantly reduces the coercive field and makes it easy to switch ferroelectric polarization under the applied electric field. We believe that this breakthrough in lead-free ceramics opens a new development window for temperature-insensitive piezoelectric properties for the high-temperature commercial applications.

Ytterbium doping effects into the Ba and Ti sites of perovskite barium titanate: Electronic structures and optical properties

Oxide perovskites doped with rare-earth have shown change in optoelectronic properties with high dielectric constants. Herein, the structural, electronic, and optical characteristics of BaTiO3 doped with ytterbium at the Ba and Ti sites were studied by employing the first-principles density functional calculations. The Tran-Blaha modified Becke-Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential and GGA + U approaches have been used for determining the optoelectronic properties. We probed the impact of the ytterbium incorporation at the Ti and Ba sites into BaTiO3 by tuning of the structural geometry and electronic structure behavior and dielectric constants. A detailed analysis, of structural properties, reveals that lattice parameters of ytterbium doping shift slightly regarding those of pristine BaTiO3. The BaO and TiO bond lengths were reduced due to the crystalline structure lattice distortion. The band structures demonstrate that ytterbium doping has induced various changes in the electronic nature of BaTiO3 by creating a magnetism. For both Ba and Ti sites, ytterbium doping has strongly increased the BaTiO3 dielectric constants.

The relationship between enhanced dielectric property and structural distortion in Ca doped Ba2NaNb5O15 tungsten bronze ceramics

The relationship between enhanced dielectric property and structural distortion in tungsten bronze structure ceramics was discussed in this work. The ceramics with the composition of (Ba1-xCax)2NaNb5O15 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4) were fabricated via conventional solid-state method. All ceramics were pure without secondary phase and the distinct lattice distortion in structure was testified by Rietveld XRD refinement. Compared with the un-doped composition, the maximum polarization and energy storage density were strongly enhanced according to the ferroelectric property measurements, which were contributed to the distortion of NbO6 octahedron induced by the variation of ionic radius. The actually pulsed charge-discharge property of x = 0.3 ceramic was tested, whist excellent power density (PD = 35.106 MV/cm3) and discharge energy density (Wd = 0.29 J/cm3) were obtained at 100 °C under 120 kV/cm, revealing the potential for application of Ba2NaNb5O15 system-based ceramics in harsh environment.

The influence of strain on the Verwey transition as a function of dopant concentration: towards a geobarometer for magnetite-bearing rocks

SUMMARY Magnetite is an abundant magnetic mineral that commonly records the ancient magnetic field in a wide variety of rock types. When cooled below ≈124 K, magnetite undergoes a phase transition, called the Verwey transition, whose characteristics are highly sensitive to grain size and stoichiometry. Studying the Verwey transition thus yields information on the formation conditions and compositions of rocks. The transition is also stress sensitive, thereby opening an avenue to understanding a rock’s strain history; however, the reason for the stress sensitivity is poorly understood. In particular, the temperature of the transition decreases when measured under pressure, yet mostly increases upon pressure release. Moreover, the stress sensitivity of the transition as a function of dopant concentration, especially after pressure cycling, was never systematically tested. We addressed these issues in order to further develop magnetite as a pressure gauge. Multidomain magnetite samples were pressure cycled up to maximum pressures of ∼5 GPa at room temperature to measure the influence of strain on the Verwey transition temperature as a function of dopant concentration after full decompression. The transition temperature measured via changes in magnetic remanence ($T_{\rm V}^{M}$) systematically increased with respect to pressure (P) in more doped samples, where domain wall pinning from impurities dominates $\mathrm{d}T_{\rm V} ^{\rm M}/\mathrm{d}P$. In less doped samples, no to only moderate pressure cycling dependence on $T_{\rm V}^{\rm M}$ was observed. Bulk coercive force (Bc) and magnetic remanence after saturation (Mrs) measured above or below the transition also increased with respect to pressure, but here effects related to permanent strain of the lattice structure prevail, and Bc versus P is steeper for less doped samples. Bc versus P increases in all cases, with a difference in slope dictated by dopant concentrations segregating the first to second-order nature of the transition. Thus, strain developed during pressure cycling controls $T_{\rm V}^{\rm M}$ and coercivity by a mechanism based on pinning of magnetic domains by both interstitial cations and structural lattice distortions. The combined observables, $T_{\rm V}^{\rm M}$ and Bc−Mrs, reflect both the dopant level and strain state of magnetite, which can quantify the pressure multidomain magnetite has experienced, especially in the range between 1 and 5 GPa. Based on these new results, we present a model that distinguishes between electronic versus defect-driven processes explaining the strain-related influences on the transition. Magnetite’s use as a geobarometer is thus a measure of its defect state, which is expressed through two somewhat independent mechanisms when sensed by magnetic observations.

Effect of doping on the structure, piezoelectric and electrical properties of Aurivillius type Ca0.6(Na0.5Bi0.5)0.4Bi2Nb2O9 ceramics

Aurivillius phase [Ca0.6(Na0.5Bi0.5)0.4]1−x(LiCe)x/2Bi2Nb2O9 (CNBNLC-100x, x = 0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, 0.10, 0.12) ceramics were prepared by the conventional solid state method. The LiCe substitution induced structural distortion and orthorhombic distortion of CNBNLC-100x ceramics which influenced piezoelectric activities and Curie temperature, respectively. The results implied that the more structural distortion of lattice leads to higher piezoelectricity. CNBNLC-8 ceramics with ultrahigh TC of 904 °C had a high piezoelectric activity of 17.6 pC/N, even after annealing at 600 °C for 2 h, the d33 value of CNBNLC-8 ceramics still retained 62.5% of its original value. Ce4+ as donor dopant, the dc resistivity of CNBN ceramics increased with the substitution of Ce4+ for Ca2+. At high temperature region, the extrinsic conductivity changes of the ceramics from p-type to n-type with the increase of Ce4+ doping amount. Further investigation demonstrated that the ac conductive process of ceramics referred to three different mechanisms. The main conduction mechanisms were considered as first-order ionization of oxygen vacancies, second- order ionization of oxygen vacancies and intrinsic dc conductivity at three temperature regions, respectively. All these good electrical properties provided the LiCe doped CNBN ceramics with a large potentiality for high-temperature piezoelectric applications.

Modeling energy band gap of doped TiO2 semiconductor using homogeneously hybridized support vector regression with gravitational search algorithm hyper-parameter optimization

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) semiconductor is characterized with a wide band gap and attracts a significant attention for several applications that include solar cell carrier transportation and photo-catalysis. The tunable band gap of this semiconductor coupled with low cost, chemical stability and non-toxicity make it indispensable for these applications. Structural distortion always accompany TiO2 band gap tuning through doping and this present work utilizes the resulting structural lattice distortion to estimate band gap of doped TiO2 using support vector regression (SVR) coupled with novel gravitational search algorithm (GSA) for hyper-parameters optimization. In order to fully capture the non-linear relationship between lattice distortion and band gap, two SVR models were homogeneously hybridized and were subsequently optimized using GSA. GSA-HSVR (hybridized SVR) performs better than GSA-SVR model with performance improvement of 57.2% on the basis of root means square error reduction of the testing dataset. Effect of Co doping and Nitrogen-Iodine co-doping on band gap of TiO2 semiconductor was modeled and simulated. The obtained band gap estimates show excellent agreement with the values reported from the experiment. By implementing the models, band gap of doped TiO2 can be estimated with high level of precision and absorption ability of the semiconductor can be extended to visible region of the spectrum for improved properties and efficiency.

Persistent Type-II Multiferroicity in Nanostructured MnWO4 Ceramics

In archetypal ferroelectrics, the polarization and related properties result from structural lattice distortions.1 For example, in BaTiO3, it is the cationic off-centering versus the oxygen octahedra that is at the origin of the exceptional dielectric properties. Keeping these properties when downsizing such compounds is thus a challenge because the lattice elastic energy is disturbed by the surface energy even at relatively large grain size of several hundreds of nm...

Experimental and First-Principles Theoretical Study of Structural and Electronic Properties in Tantalum-Doped In2O3 Semiconductor: Finding a Definitive Hyperfine Interaction Assignment

In this work we present an experimental and theoretical study from first-principles of the structural, electronic, and hyperfine properties of Ta-doped In2O3 semiconductor. The ab initio electronic structure calculations in the Ta-diluted In2O3 system enabled to obtain the structural lattice distortions and the hyperfine parameters when the Ta atom is placed at each cationic site of the bixbyite crystal structure. To this purpose we used the full-potential augmented plane wave plus local orbital (FP-APW+lo) method, within the density functional theory. The obtained results indicate that the substitutional Ta probe-impurity produces strong changes on the local structure. In addition, we performed accurate time-differential perturbed γ–γ angular correlations (TDPAC) key experiments in 181Hf(→181Ta)-implanted In2O3 samples with high crystallinity, in order to obtain high quality measurements of the electric-field gradient tensor (EFG) that unraveled the controversy settled in the literature and overcome diss...

Pressure-induced semiconducting to metallic transition in multilayered molybdenum disulphide.

Molybdenum disulphide is a layered transition metal dichalcogenide that has recently raised considerable interest due to its unique semiconducting and opto-electronic properties. Although several theoretical studies have suggested an electronic phase transition in molybdenum disulphide, there has been a lack of experimental evidence. Here we report comprehensive studies on the pressure-dependent electronic, vibrational, optical and structural properties of multilayered molybdenum disulphide up to 35 GPa. Our experimental results reveal a structural lattice distortion followed by an electronic transition from a semiconducting to metallic state at ~19 GPa, which is confirmed by ab initio calculations. The metallization arises from the overlap of the valance and conduction bands owing to sulphur-sulphur interactions as the interlayer spacing reduces. The electronic transition affords modulation of the opto-electronic gain in molybdenum disulphide. This pressure-tuned behaviour can enable the development of novel devices with multiple phenomena involving the strong coupling of the mechanical, electrical and optical properties of layered nanomaterials.

Lattice dynamics and the ferroelectric and antiferrodistorsive instabilities in a bulk crystal and thin films of SrZrO3

The lattice dynamics and energies of phases related to antiferrodistorsive and ferroelectric distortions of bulk crystals and thin films of the SrZrO3 crystal have been calculated within the framework of the ab initio model of an ionic crystal. In the case of a bulk crystal, it has been found that the most energetically favorable phases are related to antiferrodistorsive lattice distortions. Ferroelectricity in the SrZrO3 crystal is suppressed by structural lattice distortions. In the case of thin films, it has been found that the ferroelectric instability is retained after the “rotation” of the oxygen octahedron and the film remains polar both in the case of a free surface and with the inclusion of the SrTiO3 substrate in the calculation. The spontaneous polarization of thin films of different thicknesses in the ferroelectric phase has been calculated.

Structural aspects of the relaxation process in spin crossover solids: Phase separation, mapping of lattice strain, and domain wall structure

We present a nonequilibrium study of the relaxation process in spin crossover solids using numerical simulations of a recently introduced two-variable elastic Ising-like model. We analyze the structural lattice distortions accompanying the relaxation from the metastable high-spin to the ground low-spin state as a function of cooperativity. In the highly cooperative case, a sigmoidal relaxation behavior of the high-spin fraction ${n}_{\text{HS}}$ is described, and it occurs jointly with a structural phase separation process. The mean lattice spacing follows a similar sigmoidal trend, owing to the interplay between electronic and lattice variables in the Hamiltonian. Weakly cooperative systems are characterized by single exponential relaxations of the high-spin fraction, the corresponding structural transformation proceeds homogeneously with a progressive relaxation of the mean lattice spacing. Long relaxation tail effects are also observed. We highlight the development of lattice strain accompanying the spin transition, and show that structural phase rebuilding proceeds in the late stage of the relaxation by releasing residual strain. Under specific conditions, a temporal decoupling between the electronic and lattice variables is observed, which may have direct applications for interpreting time-resolved spectroscopic or diffraction experiments and for elucidating unusual structural behaviors, such as the development of superstructures, modulated structures, or transient phases.

Effect of Uniaxial Strain on the Structural and Magnetic Phase Transitions inBaFe2As2

We report neutron scattering experiments probing the influence of uniaxial strain on both the magnetic and structural order parameters in the parent iron pnictide compound, BaFe2As2. Our data show that modest strain fields along the in-plane orthorhombic b axis can affect significant changes in phase behavior simultaneous to the removal of structural twinning effects. As a result, we demonstrate in BaFe2As2 samples detwinned via uniaxial strain that the in-plane C4 symmetry is broken by both the structural lattice distortion and long-range spin ordering at temperatures far above the nominal (strain-free) phase transition temperatures. Surprising changes in the magnetic order parameter of this system under relatively small strain fields also suggest the inherent presence of magnetic domains fluctuating above the strain-free ordering temperature in this material.