%0 Journal Article
%A Wei, Xian-Kui
%A Prokhorenko, Sergei
%A Wang, Bingqing
%A Liu, Zenghui
%A Xie, Yu-Juan
%A Nahas, Yousra
%A Jia, Chun-Lin
%A Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal E.
%A Mayer, Joachim
%A Bellaiche, Laurent
%A Ye, Zuo-Guang
%T Ferroelectric phase-transition frustration near a tricritical composition point
%J Nature Communications
%V 12
%N 1
%@ 2041-1723
%C [London]
%I Nature Publishing Group UK
%M FZJ-2021-04985
%P 5322
%D 2021
%X Phase transition describes a mutational behavior of matter states at a critical transition temperature or external field. Despite the phase-transition orders are well sorted by classic thermodynamic theory, ambiguous situations interposed between the first- and second-order transitions were exposed one after another. Here, we report discovery of phase-transition frustration near a tricritical composition point in ferroelectric Pb(Zr1-xTix)O3. Our multi-scale transmission electron microscopy characterization reveals a number of geometrically frustrated microstructure features such as self-assembled hierarchical domain structure, degeneracy of mesoscale domain tetragonality and decoupled polarization-strain relationship. Associated with deviation from the classic mean-field theory, dielectric critical exponent anomalies and temperature dependent birefringence data unveil that the frustrated transition order stems from intricate competition of short-range polar orders and their decoupling to long-range lattice deformation. With supports from effective Hamiltonian Monte Carlo simulations, our findings point out a potentially universal mechanism to comprehend the abnormal critical phenomena occurring in phase-transition materials.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%$ 34493734
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000694655700017
%R 10.1038/s41467-021-25543-1
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/903289