Phase transition and exponential growth of the local polarization in CaxBa1-xNb2O6 ferroelectric

Abstract: CaxBa1-xNb2O6 (CBN) ferroelectric is isostructural with SrxBa1-xNb2O6 (SBN) that is a prototypical ferroelectric of tetragonal tungsten bronze (TTB) structure, but shows a much higher Curie temperature Tc than SBN, providing a wider operation temperature for electro-optical devices. Here, we report the phase diagram and phase transition of CBN solid solution that are still lack of understanding. We show that CBN can be stably formed within a solid solution range of 0.19 <= x <= 0.32. In sharp contrast to SBN that shows crossover from ferroelectric to relaxor around x~ 0.5, CBN merely exhibits a well-defined first-order phase transition in the whole solid solution range but shows polarization precursor dynamics before transition into the ferroelectric phase. We found that the local polarization exponentially grows with temperature from the Burns temperature TB toward Tc. The local polarization was estimated to grow up to several tens pC/cm-^2 before transition into the ferroelectric phase. Moreover, we found that the substitution of Ca for Ba lowers Tc and TB and there is a linear correlation between Tc and the length of polar c-axis, which can be attributed to the chemical pressure effects. These findings may provide a deep insight into the nature of phase transition in the TTB structure oxides.