Effects of Sr content and bias field on acoustic properties of strontium barium niobate studied by Brillouin light scattering

Abstract

The effects of Sr/Ba ratio and bias field on the acoustic anomalies of SrxBa1−xNb2O6 (SBN − x) were investigated by Brillouin scattering. The “critical” part in the elastic constant and the absorption coefficient increased linearly with decreasing Sr content. This was attributed to the enhanced coupling between the polarization and the strain due to the formation of quasistatic polar regions in the paraelectric phase. The field-cooling of SBN-0.61 induced discontinuous changes in the elastic properties with some remnant relaxor signature. This was tentatively ascribed to the persisting polar nanoregions that were not aligned due to quenched random fields.