Time-of-flight neutron total scattering with applied electric fields: Ex situ and in situ studies of ferroelectric materials
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Neutron Scattering Division
- University of Leeds (United Kingdom). School of Chemical and Process Engineering
- National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD (United States). Materials Measurement Science Division
- North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States). Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Characterizing the structural response of functional materials (e.g., piezoelectrics and ferroelectrics) to electric fields is key for the creation of structure-property relationships. Here in this paper, we present a new sample environment and data reduction routines which allow the measurement of time-of-flight neutron total scattering during the in situ or ex situ application of high voltage (<10 kV) to a sample. Instead of utilizing the entire detector space of the diffractometer, only selected regions of detector pixels with scattering at the desired angle to the sample electric field are interrogated, which allows the generation of orientation-dependent reciprocal space patterns and real-space pair distribution functions (PDFs). We demonstrate the method using the relaxor ferroelectric Na1/2Bi1/2TiO3 and observe lattice expansion parallel and contraction perpendicular to the electric field for both in situ or ex situ experiments, revealing the irreversible nature of the local scale structural changes to this composition. Additionally, changes in the distributions of nearest neighbor metal-oxygen bond lengths are observed, which have been difficult to observe in previously measured analogous orientation-dependent X-ray PDFs. Lastly, considerations related to sample positioning and background subtraction are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725; KC040602
- OSTI ID:
- 1474610
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1472216
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 89, Issue 9; ISSN 0034-6748
- Publisher:
- American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Time filtering of event based neutron scattering data: A pathway to study the dynamic structural responses of materials
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journal | September 2018 |
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