Drift of charged defects in local fields as aging mechanism in ferroelectrics

Abstract

Point defect migration is considered as a mechanism for aging in ferroelectrics. Numerical results are given for the coupled problems of point defect migration and electrostatic energy relaxation in a 2D domain configuration. The peak values of the clamping pressure at domain walls are in the range of $10^6$ Pa, which corresponds to macroscopically observed coercive stresses in perovskite ferroelectrics. The effect is compared to mechanisms involving orientational reordering of defect dipoles in the bulk of domains. Domain clamping is significantly stronger in the drift mechanism than in the orientational picture for the same material parameters.

24 pages, 12 figures, accepted to Physical Review B

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Hardening-softening transition in Fe-doped Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 ceramics and evolution of the third harmonic of the polarization response
• Space-charge mechanism of aging in ferroelectrics: an exactly solvable two-dimensional model