Mitsui model with diagonal strains: A unified description of external pressure effect and thermal expansion of Rochelle salt NaKC_4H_4O_6\cdot4H_2O

TL;DR

This paper extends the Mitsui model to include diagonal strains, enabling a unified description of external pressure effects and thermal expansion in Rochelle salt, with good agreement to experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Mitsui model incorporating diagonal strains, accurately modeling pressure and thermal effects in Rochelle salt crystals.

Findings

Model accurately predicts pressure dependence of Curie temperatures.

Thermal expansion coefficients and elastic constants match experimental data.

Dipole moments increase with hydrostatic pressure.

Abstract

We elaborate a modification of the deformable two-sublattice Mitsui model of [Levitskii R.R. et al., Phys. Rev. B. 2003, 67, 174112] and [Levitskii R.R. et al., Condens. Matter Phys., 2005, 8, 881] that consistently takes into account diagonal components of the strain tensor, arising either due to external pressures or due to thermal expansion. We calculate the related to those strains thermal, piezoelectric, and elastic characteristics of the system. Using the developed fitting procedure, a set of the model parameters is found for the case of Rochelle salt crystals, providing a satisfactory agreement with the available experimental data for the hydrostatic and uniaxial pressure dependences of the Curie temperatures, temperature dependences of spontaneous diagonal strains, linear thermal expansion coefficients, elastic constants c_ij^E and c_i4^E, piezoelectric coefficients d_1i and g_1i (i=1,2,3). The hydrostatic pressure variation of dielectric permittivity is described using a derived expression for the permittivity of a partially clamped crystal. The dipole moments and the asymmetry parameter of Rochelle salt are found to increase with hydrostatic pressure.