Phenomena And Mechanism On Phase Transformation Twinning In Nanocrystalline BaTiO3

Abstract

AbstractThe detailed structure of nanocrystalline BaTiO3 powder during ball milling has been studied using XRD & TEM. The study illustrates important advances in understanding atomic scale properties of this material. Ferroelectric BaTiO3 powder undergoes phase transformation along the sequence Cubic(Pm3m)-tetragonal(P4mm)-orthohombic (Amm2)-rhombohedral(R3m) structure when pressureless sintered samples are cooled from high temperature to low temperature. The high to low symmetry phases are not related to group subgroup symmetry as transformation is discontinuous and first order in nature and the twin relationship in the low symmetry is forbidden by Landau theory. In case of ball milled BaTiO3 powder a continuous and diffusionless phase transition occur via second order to and from a metastable intermediate phase. In this pathway crystallites in the aggregation are twinned and the twin structure is related to crystal point group m3m which in the present case is illustrated as having 6mm symmetry formed under low driving force. The unit cell evolution due to phase transition and the crystallographic relationship are established. The phase transformation, coalescence and twin structure of thermally annealed BaTiO3 nanocrystals under high vacuum has been investigated using in situ high temperature XRD. The structure analysis is performed with the use of the method of computer modelling of disorder structure and simulation of corresponding diffraction pattern.