English

Determination of ferroelectric compositional phase transition using novel virtual crystal approach

Materials Science 2009-10-31 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks

Abstract

We employ a new method for studying compositionally disordered ferroelectric oxides. This method is based on the virtual crystal approximation (VCA), in which two or more component potentials are averaged into a composite atomic potential. In our method, we construct a virtual atom with the correctly averaged atomic size and atomic eigenvalues. We have used our new method to study the composition dependent phase transition in Pb(Zr_{1-x}Ti_x)O_3 lying between x=0.5 and x=0.4. We correctly predict the experimentally determined phase transition from the tetragonal phase to a low-temperature rhombohedral phase between these two compositions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0003317,
  title  = {Determination of ferroelectric compositional phase transition using novel virtual crystal approach},
  author = {Nicholas J. Ramer and Andrew M. Rappe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0003317},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings for Fundamental Physics of Ferroelectrics, Aspen, CO February 13-20, 2000