Families of ferroelectrics

Tantalum and niobium are added, in the form of carbides, to cemented carbide compositions used in the production of cutting tools. Pure oxides are widely used in the optical industiy as additives and deposits, and in organic synthesis processes as catalysts and promoters [12, 13]. Binary and more complex oxide compounds based on tantalum and niobium form a huge family of ferroelectric materials that have high Curie temperatures, high dielectric permittivity, and piezoelectric, pyroelectric and non-linear optical properties [14-17]. Compounds of this class are used in the production of energy transformers, quantum electronics, piezoelectrics, acoustics, and so on. Two of... 

Crystals with one of the ten polar point-group symmetries (Ci, C2, Cs, C2V, C4, C4V, C3, C3v, C(, Cgv) are called polar crystals. They display spontaneous polarization and form a family of ferroelectric materials. The main properties of ferroelectric materials include relatively high dielectric permittivity, ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition that occurs at a certain temperature called the Curie temperature, piezoelectric effect, pyroelectric effect, nonlinear optic property - the ability to multiply frequencies, ferroelectric hysteresis loop, and electrostrictive, electro-optic and other properties [16, 388],... 

By combining regiospecific synthesis with alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic side chain moieties, Bjornholm, McCullough, and coworkers [285,286] formed regioregular amphiphilic PATs that can spontaneously self-assemble at hydrophilKc or hydrophobic interfaces to form oriented monolayers or bilayers. Finally, there are also efforts to induce chiral liquid crystalline phases. Goto et al. [287] have recently reported on a family of ferroelectric LC substituents. These materials also exhibit a rich array of... 

In the Landolt-Bdmstein data collection, ferroelectric and antiferroelectric substances are classified into 72 families according to their chemical composition and their crystallographic structure. Some substances which are in fact neither ferroelectric nor antiferroelectric but which are important in relation to ferroelectricity or anti-ferroelectricity, for instance as an end material of a solid solution, are also included in these families as related substances. This subsection surveys these 72 families of ferroelectrics presented in Landolt-Bornstein Vol. III/36 (LB III/36). Nineteen of these families concern oxides [5.1,2], 30 of them concern inorganic crystals other than oxides [5.3], and 23 of them concern organic crystals, liquid crystals, and polymers [5.4]. Table 4.5-1 lists these families and gives some information about each family. Substances classified in LB 111/36 as miscellaneous crystals (outside the families) are not included. 

Table A..5-1 The 72 families of ferroelectric materials. The number assigned to each family corresponds to the number used in LB III/36. The numbers in parentheses (A sub>. f+a ) after the family name serve the purpose of conveying some information about the size and importance of the family. The numbers indicate the following A sub the number of pure substances (ferroelectric, antiferroelectric, and related substances) which are treated as members of this family in LB III/36 A f+A the number of ferroelectric and antiferroelectric substances which are treated as members of this family in LB III/36 n, the number of representative substances from this family whose properties are surveyed in Sect. 4.5.4. For some of these families, additional remarks are needed for instance, because the perovskite-type oxide family has many members and consists of several subfamilies because the liquid crystal and polymer families have very specific properties compared with crystalline ferroelectrics and because the traditional names of some families are apt to lead to misconceptions about their members. Such families are marked by letters a-m following the parentheses, and remarks on these families are given under the corresponding letter in the text in Sect. 4.5.3.1...

Ferroelectric Thin-Film Devices. Since 1989, the study of ferroelectric thin films has been an area of increasing growth. The compositions studied most extensively are in the PZT/PLZT family, although BaTiO, KNbO, and relaxor ferroelectric materials, such as PMN and PZN, have also been investigated. Solution deposition is the most frequentiy utilized fabrication process, because of the lower initial capital investment cost, ease of film fabrication, and the excellent dielectric and ferroelectric properties that result. 

A general review of photorefractive materials was presented in 1988. 150) Also, two monographs in were published which detail theory, physical characterization and practice of the use of known photorefractives.(151) Three classes of inorganic materials dominate. Ferroelectric oxides, such as LiNbC>3 and BaTiC>3 mentioned above compound semiconductors such as GaAs and InP, and the sillenite family of oxides, exemplified by Bii2SiC>20 and Bii2TiC>20 The semiconductors are sensitive only in the infrared, while the other materials operate in the... 

These important, but not completely understood, problems are considered here by using the novel, quantum chemical, approach to the microscopical theory of ferroelectrics and related materials [1], The isomorphous H-bonded crystals M3(H/D)(A04)2 (M = K, Rb A = S, Se) are taken as examples. There are two reasons of such choice. This family is investigated actively at present. Moreover, it is a suitable subject of theoretical examination because of simple chemical constitution of the TKHS-like compounds (zero-dimensional H-bond network). 

Nanometer scale domain configurations in fe bulk crystals pave the way for a new class of photonic devices. As an example, preliminary calculations show that a uv laser (A = 300 nm) based on second harmonic generation in LiTaC>3 crystal requires a periodic nanodomain superlattice with domain widths of around 700 nm. In addition, the current domain gratings in ferroelectric crystals are suitable only for quasi-phase-matched nonlinear interactions in the forward direction, where the pump and generated beams propagate in the same direction. Sub-micron ferroelectric domain gratings are the basis for a new family of devices based on backward nonlinear quasi-phase-matched optical interactions in which the generated beam travels in a reverse or another non-collinear direction to the incident beam. Non-collinear... 

Nematic materials are only one member of a large family of a variety of structurally different compounds forming liquid crystalline mesophases. Although only nematics have yet found really widespread use, mostly for display applications, some structurally highly diverse smectic phases also have unique electrooptical characteristics, for example ferroelectricity or antiferroelectricity, which can be modulated by selective fluorination [5, 51]. For 20 years intensive effort has been devoted to making practical use of these phenomena. 

The first illustration is provided by ferroelectrics belonging to the family of pyridinium salts. Complex interplay between the contributions of van der Waals, Coulomb, dipolar and hydrogen-bonding interactions are expected because of the hybrid nature of the compound. The majority of reported NMR experiments are proton second-moment and relaxation studies on polycrystalline samples. The most sophisticated NMR methods with regard to resolution, symmetry and time-scale interpretations applied to the historical problem of assigning a pure order disorder or displacive mechanism to a ferroelectric phase transition will provide the second example with the study of squaric acids and perovskites compounds like BaTi03. 

Chemical and physical processing techniques for ferroelectric thin films have undergone explosive advancement in the past few years (see Ref. 1, for example). The use of PZT (PbZri- cTi c03) family ferroelectrics in the nonvolatile and dynamic random access memory applications present potentially large markets [2]. Other thin-film devices based on a wide variety of ferroelectrics have also been explored. These include multilayer thin-film capacitors [3], piezoelectric or electroacoustic transducer and piezoelectric actuators [4-6], piezoelectric ultrasonic micromotors [7], high-frequency surface acoustic devices [8,9], pyroelectric intrared (IR) detectors [10-12], ferroelectric/photoconduc-tive displays [13], electrooptic waveguide devices or optical modulators [14], and ferroelectric gate and metal/insulator/semiconductor transistor (MIST) devices [15,16]. 

Recently, efforts have been devoted to the fabrication and characterization of PbZri- Ti c03 family thin films for their potential applications in nonvolatile memory devices (See Ref. 17, for example). Partly because of the convenient stoichiometry control during processing, it was found that chemical methods, such as sol-gel and metal organic decomposition (MOD), are superior to physical means in many aspects. To appreciate better the science and technology of ferroelectric thin-film fabrication, it is important to give a brief account of the past efforts and the present status and, it is hoped, shed some light on the future. 

The first report of a wet chemical processing of ferroelectric thin film was by Fukushima et al. in 1975 [18]. They reported the use of a mixed alkoxide and organic salt precursors in the fabrication of BaTiOs film. Application of sol-gel processing for the PZT thin films was started in 1984 by Wu et al. [19] and Fukushima et al. [20] and followed by Budd et al. in 1985 [21]. More recently, continuing efforts in the processing of PZT family thin films by sol-gel and MOD methods can also be found in the literature [22-27]. 

Similar tolane systems to those reported by Nguyen have been prepared by Walba et al. [53] for the purposes of studying NLO effects in liquid crystals, and in particular in ferroelectric phases. The two families of materials, which have lateral nitro-substituents, are shown in the general structures 9 and 10. Most of the ethers, 9, are reported to exhibit phases, which have relatively large... 

The development of the poling process opened the door to large families of perovskite ceramic materials with properties superior to BaTiOj (BT) for many applications. The major perovskite materials to be utilised over the latter half of the twentieth century were lead-containing ferroelectric ceramic samples derived from lead zirconate PbZrOj (PZ) and lead titanate PbTiOj (PT), including phases in the... 

Previous low frequency studies have failed to detect the ferro-para-electric nature of the I - II transition and CSHSO4 was considered as the only non-ferroelectric material of the MHXO4 family of compounds with an infinite chain structure. This is probably due to the low dipole moment value and to the fact that Asj and As4 susceptibilities vary in opposite directions. 

Subsequently we present the main experimental results about size effects of different physical properties of nanoferroelectrics with perovskite structure [16]. Latter ferroelectrics constitute large group of the materials with structure ABO3. The majority of them have wide band gap so that pure samples (i.e. those without specially added impurities) are almost ideal insulators. Note that the predominant part of modern technological applications of ferroelectrics belong to the substances of perovskite family. 

Fesenko, E.G. (1972) Family of Perovskite and Ferroelectricity, Atomizdat, Moscow (in Russian). 

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