Browsing by Author "Wei, XY"

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    Collective nonlinear electric polarization via defect-driven local symmetry breaking
    (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019-05-17) Dong, W; Cortie, DL; Lu, T; Sun, QB; Narayanan, N; Hu, WB; Jacob, L; Li, Q; Yu, DH; Chen, H; Chen, AP; Wei, XY; Wang, G; Humphrey, MG; Frankcombe, TJ; Liu, Y
    In this work, we report the defect-mediated, abnormal non-linear polarization behavior observed in centrosymmetric rutile TiO2 where less than 1 at% of sterically mismatched Mg2+ ions are introduced to create ferroelectric-like polarization hysteresis loops. It is found that the Image ID:c9mh00516a-t2.gif defect cluster produces a dipole moment exceeding 6 Debye, with a rotatable component. Such a polarization is further enhanced by the displacement of neighboring Ti4+ ions. The coupling between such defect-driven symmetry-breaking regions generates a collective nonlinear electrical polarization state that persists to high temperatures. More importantly, an observation of abnormal bias shift of polarization hysteresis suggests an antiparallel alignment of certain dipoles frozen relative to the external poling electric field, which is associated with oxygen vacancy hopping. This result challenges the long-standing notion of parallel alignment of dipoles with the external electric field in ferroelectrics. This work also reveals an unexpected new form of non-linear dielectric polarization (non-ferroelectricity) in solid-state materials. © Royal Society of Chemistry 2024
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    Disordered structures and low temperature dielectric relaxation properties of two misplaced-displacive cubic pyrochlores found in the Bi2O3–MIIO–Nb2O5 (M=Mg, Ni) systems
    (Elsevier, 2007-09) Nguyen, HB; Norén, L; Liu, Y; Withers, RL; Wei, XY; Elcombe, MM
    The disordered structures and low temperature dielectric relaxation properties of Bi1.667Mg0.70Nb1.52O7 (BMN) and Bi1.67Ni0.75Nb1.50O7 (BNN) misplaced-displacive cubic pyrochlores found in the Bi2O3–MIIO–Nb2O5 (M=Mg, Ni) systems are reported. As for other recently reported Bi-pyrochlores, the metal ion vacancies are found to be confined to the pyrochlore A site. The B2O6 octahedral sub-structure is found to be fully occupied and well-ordered. Considerable displacive disorder, however, is found associated with the O' A2 tetrahedral sub-structure in both cases. The A-site ions were displaced from Wyckoff position 16d (1/2, 1/2, 1/2) to 96 h (1/2, 1/2-éA, 1/2 + éA while the O' oxygen was shifted from position 8b (3/8, 3/8, 3/8) to Wyckoff position 32e (3/8 + éọ, 3/8 + éọ, 3/8 + éọ). The refined displacement magnitudes off the 16d and 8b sites for the A and O' sites were 0.408 Å/0.423 Å and 0.350 Å/0.369 Å for BMN/BNN, respectively. © 2007, Elsevier Ltd.