Crystal exhibiting orientated domains

Figure 9. a) High-resolution image of a crystal exhibiting orientated domains. The simulated images are compared to the enlargement of the experimental images, b) Idealized model of the junction. 

In spite of the presence of ECC, the sample exhibiting a domain structure remains unoriented on the macroscopic level. Figure 3 c shows a great difference in the structures obtained, if molecular orientation exists and if hydrostatic compression is applied. Although the method of hydrostatic compression of the melt is of paramount importance from the scientific view point just for samples crystallized under pressure it was possible to prove unequivocally the existence of ECC), it does not allow a direct preparation of oriented samples of high strength (they are brittle and readily crumble to powder under minimum strain). However, the material obtained in this way can probably serve as a semi-finished product for further technological treatment that would improve its mechanical properties. 

This difference in behavior between the two types of materials is related once again to the presence of domains and the ease or difficulty with which they can be induced to migrate and/or demagnetize. In the discussion up to this point, M was treated as if it were a unique function of //, but the actual situation is more complicated M depends on the relative orientation of the various crystallographic planes to the direction of the applied field intensity. In other words, it exhibits orientation anisotropy. Also M depends on the shape of the crystal being magnetized i.e., it exhibits shape anisotropy. This shape factor is quite important e.g., it is much easier to magnetize a... 

The most important materials among nonlinear dielectrics are ferroelectrics which can exhibit a spontaneous polarization PI in the absence of an external electric field and which can spHt into spontaneously polarized regions known as domains (5). It is evident that in the ferroelectric the domain states differ in orientation of spontaneous electric polarization, which are in equiUbrium thermodynamically, and that the ferroelectric character is estabUshed when one domain state can be transformed to another by a suitably directed external electric field (6). It is the reorientabiUty of the domain state polarizations that distinguishes ferroelectrics as a subgroup of materials from the 10-polar-point symmetry group of pyroelectric crystals (7—9). 

NFS spectra recorded at 300 K for -cut and c-cut crystals are shown in Fig. 9.17 [48]. The/factors for the two orientations were derived from the speed-up of the nuclear decay (i.e., from the slope of the time-dependent intensity in Fig. 9.17a and from the slope of the envelope in Fig. 9.17b). The factors obtained f ( P = 0.122 (10) and f = 0.206(10) exhibit significant anisotropic vibrational behavior of iron in GNP. This anisotropy in f is the reason for the observed asymmetry in the line intensity of the quadrupole doublet (in a conventional Mossbauer spectrum in the energy domain) of a powder sample of GNP caused by the Goldanskii-Karyagin effect [49]. 

Ferroelasticity is the mechanical analogon to ferroelectricity. A crystal is ferroelastic if it exhibits two (or more) differently oriented states in the absence of mechanical strain, and if one of these states can be shifted to the other one by mechanical strain. CaCl2 offers an example (Fig. 4.1, p. 33). During the phase transition from the rutile type to the CaCl2 type, the octahedra can be rotated in one or the other direction. If either rotation takes place in different regions of the crystal, the crystal will consist of domains having the one or the other orientation. By exerting pressure all domains can be forced to adopt only one orientation. 

However, if an LC substance is heated, it will show more than one melting point. Thus, liquid crystals are substances that exhibit a phase of matter that has properties between those of a conventional liquid and a solid crystal. For instance, an LC may flow like a liquid but have the molecules in the liquid arranged and/or oriented in a crystal-like way. There are many different types of LC phases that can be distinguished based on their different optical properties (such as birefringence). When viewed under a microscope using a polarized light source, different liquid crystal phases will appear to have a distinct texture. Each patch in the texture corresponds to a domain where the LC molecules are oriented in a different direction. Within a domain, however, the molecules are well ordered. Liquid crystal materials may not always be in an LC phase (just as water is not always in the liquid phase it may also be found in the solid or gas phase). 

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