Ferroelectric Domain Morphology Evolution and Octahedral Tilting in Lead-Free (Bi1/2Na1/2)TiO3-(Bi1/2K1/2)TiO3-(Bi1/2Li1/2)TiO3-BaTiO3 Ceramics at Different Temperatures

TL;DR

This study investigates how ferroelectric domain structures and octahedral tilting evolve with temperature in lead-free ceramics, revealing domain reduction, absence of antiferroelectric transition, and persistent octahedral tilting effects.

Contribution

It provides detailed TEM analysis of domain morphology and octahedral tilting behavior in lead-free ferroelectric ceramics across a temperature range, highlighting their stability and evolution.

Findings

Ferroelectric domains decrease with temperature.

No evidence of ferroelectric-antiferroelectric transition.

Octahedral tilting domains are smaller than 30 nm and uniformly distributed.

Abstract

Observations by in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) reveal the changes in domains morphology in 0.885(Bi1/2Na1/2)TiO3-0.05(Bi1/2K1/2)TiO3-0.015(Bi1/2Li1/2)TiO3-0.05BaTiO3 ceramics. Evolution of the macroscopic ferroelectric domains has been observed at 25 oC to 180 oC. The ferroelectric domains and their walls reduce progressively with increasing temperature. In the selected-area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns the crystallographic evidence of antiferroelectric domain is not found over the temperature range, which provides the evidence that the ferroelectric-antiferroelectric transition does not occur in the ceramic. The temperature-dependent forbidden 3/2 1/2 0 and superstructure 3/2 1/2 1/2 reflections indicate the presence of an in-phase and anti-phase octahedral tilting in the ceramic, respectively. Dark-field TEM images show that the size of the octahedral tilted domains is smaller than 30 nm across and these domains are uniformly distributed in the grains. The influence of the localized octahedral titling on the stability of ferroelectric domains and the temperature-dependent properties is discussed in this paper.