Ferroelectric Soft Modes in Ceramics and Films

Ferroelectric soft mode properties in ceramics and thin films are reviewed and compared with single crystals. In general, the permittivity in ceramics and thin films is markedly reduced compared to the single crystals mainly because of low-permittivity grain boundaries - dead layers - (sometimes also nano-cracks) present in the samples. In SrTiO3 and BaTiO3, this dielectric reduction is fully explained by stiffening of the soft mode frequency. In most other ferroelectrics, the soft mode accounts only partly for such a permittivity reduction, since the transition is only partially driven by the phonon mode softening. In these cases, additional relaxational dispersion below the optical phonon range (central mode) accounts for the main part of the dielectric anomaly near Tc. Influence of nano-cracks on reduced permittivity near Tc and related stiffening of the central mode is manifested in the antiferroelectric PbZrO3 ceramics.