Intrinsic activation energy for twin wall motion

Abstract

Even in a topologically perfect crystal, a moving twin wall will experience forces due to the discrete nature of the lattice. The potential energy landscape can be described in terms of one of two parameters: the Peierls energy, which is the activation energy for domain wall motion in a perfect crystal; and the Peierls stress, the maximum pinning stress that the potential can exert. We investigate these parameters in a one order parameter discrete Landau-Ginzburg model and a classical potential model of the ferroelastic perovskite CaTiO3. Using the one order parameter model we show that the Peierls energy scales with the barrier height of the Landau double well potential and calculate its dependence on the width of the wall numerically. In CaTiO3 we calculate the Peierls energy and stress indirectly from the one order parameter model and directly from the interatomic force field. Despite the simplicity of the one order parameter model, its predictions of the activation energy are in good agreement with calculated values.

References in corpus (1)

• A first-principles study of oxygen vacancy pinning of domain walls in PbTiO3

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Phenomenological Thermodynamic Potential for CaTiO3 Single Crystal
• Tin telluride: a weakly co-elastic metal
• Thermally induced changes of structure in Ni${}_{50}$Mn${}_{25+x}$Ga${}_{25-x}$ magnetic shape memory single crystals with very low twinning stress
• Origin of ferroelectricity in magnesium doped zinc oxide
• Effect of internal friction on transformation twin dynamics in SrxBa1-xSnO3 perovskite