Ferroelectric materials, electro-optic effects

Certain glass-ceramic materials also exhibit potentially useful electro-optic effects. These include glasses with microcrystaUites of Cd-sulfoselenides, which show a strong nonlinear response to an electric field (9), as well as glass-ceramics based on ferroelectric perovskite crystals such as niobates, titanates, or zkconates (10—12). Such crystals permit electric control of scattering and other optical properties. 

Ceramic PLZT has a number of structures, depending upon composition, and can show both the Pockels (linear) electro-optic effect in the ferroelectric rhombohedral and tetragonal phases and the Kerr (quadratic) effect in the cubic paraelectric state. Because of the ceramic nature of the material, the non-cubic phases show no birefringence in the as-prepared state and must be poled to become useful electro-optically (Section 6.4.1). PMN-PT and PZN-PT are relaxor ferroelectrics. These have an isotropic structure in the absence of an electric field, but this is easily altered in an applied electric field to give a birefringent electro-optic material. All of these phases, with optimised compositions, have much higher electro-optic coefficients than LiNb03 and are actively studied for device application. 

Electro-optic effects in ferroelectric materials can also be dealt with by similar arguments to those used so far. For example, above the Curie temperature (about 120°C), BaTiOs belongs to a cubic system (m3m), and since it has a center of symmetry does not exhibit piezoelectric or first-order electro-optic effects. Accordingly, the electro-optic effect in this paraelectric phase is the Kerr effect. Using the polarization optical constant R in Eq. 7 instead of an electric field, it can also be expressed in terms of polarization as follows ... 

From the point of view of physics, LCs are partially oriented fluids that exhibit anisotropic optical, dielectric, magnetic, and mechanical properties. The most important property of LCs is the reorganization of their supramolecular structures on external stimuli such as electric and magnetic fields, temperatnre, and mechanical stress, which lead to changes in their optical properties. In particular, electric tiled-induced control of optical properties of LCs (electro-optical effects based on the Freedericksz transition ) is at the heart of the multi-billion dollar liquid crystal display (LCD) industry. Most current LCD technologies rely on nematic " and to a lesser extent on ferroelectric LCs, while the recently discovered bent-core and orthoconic LCs still require significant investment into fundamental research and development. These and other applications and technologies continne to drive the search for new liquid crystal materials, and provide impetus to continue fundamental studies on new, often exotic, classes of compounds. 

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],... 

The properties of zeotype host-guest composites described above - i e, spatial organization, protection and stabilization of guest species - will become more important as molecules exhibit further properties that are essential for their use as materials. The well-developed synthetic methods for molecular compounds allow the preparation of designed molecular entities that possess predictable properties. However, no such thoroughly elaborated synthetic methods are available for the construction of organized arrays of functional molecules in their solid structures [36]. This is cumbersome since often the arrangement of the molecules in their solid compounds is detrimental to the effects (e g. non-linear optical, ferroelectric, electro-optical) that are to be exploited in materials. For example, many structures of molecules in the solid state are centrosymmetric. Also, molecular... 

This book was conceived as a renewed version of the earlier published original book, Electro-Optical and Magneto-Optical Properties of Liquid Crystals (Wiley, Chichester, 1983) written by one of us (L.M. Blinov). That book was first published in Russian (Nauka, Moscow, 1978) and then was modified slightly for the English translation. Since then new information on electrooptical effects in liquid crystals has been published. Novel effects have been discovered in nematics and cholesterics (such as the supertwist effect), and new classes of liquid crystalline materials, such as ferroelectric liquid crystals, appear. Recently, polymer liquid crystals attracted much attention and new electrooptical effects, both in pure polymer mesophases and polymer dispersed liquid crystals, were studied. An important contribution was also made in the understanding of surface properties and related phenomena (surface anchoring and bistability, flexoelectricity, etc.). 

Since the electro-optic tensor has the same symmetry as the tensor of the inverse piezoelectric effect, the linear electro-optic (Pockels) effect is confined to the symmetry groups in which piezoelectricity occurs (see Table 8.3). The electro-optic coefficients of most dielectric materials are small (of the order of 10 m V ), with the notable exception of ferroelectrics such as potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP KH2PO4), lithium niobate (liNbOs), lithium tantalate (LiTaOs), barium sodium niobate (Ba2NaNb50i5), or strontium barium niobate (Sro.75Bao.25Nb206) (Zheludev, 1990). For example, the tensorial matrix of KDP with symmetry group 42m has the form... 

Potassium tantalate-niobate [K(Ta Nbi jc)03, KTN] is one of the ferroelectric materials with the perovskite structure, and is a sohd solution of potassium tantalate (KTaOs) and potassium niobate (KNbOs). The Ciuie temperature of KTN for the cubic to tetragonal transition varies with Ta/Nb ratio, and is lowered with increasing Ta substitution (Triebwasser, 1959). The ferroelectric properties of KTN, therefore, can be controlled by the Ta/Nb ratio. The nonferroelectric cubic phase of KTN atx= 0.65 is known to show photorefractive effect based upon a large quadratic electro-optic coefficient at room temperature (Gausic, 1964 Orlowski, 1980). 

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