Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Materials science

Relaxors go critical

Nature volume 441, pages 941–942 (2006)Cite this article

Relaxor ferroelectrics are fascinating and useful materials, but they seem to be heterogeneous, hopeless messes. Observing what they do under electric fields reveals critical behaviour that helps to make sense of them.

Piezoelectrics — materials that convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, and vice versa — form the alarms in our watches, the warning buzzers in our cars, and the transducers used in sonar and medical ultrasound. They are also being used for knifeless surgery and to build tiny pumps and motors for medical applications. On page 956 of this issue, Kutnjak and colleagues1 report investigations of the thermodynamic properties and phase diagram of relaxor ferroelectrics with giant piezoelectric effects. These materials offer a response that is up to ten times greater than that of standard piezoelectrics, and they are revolutionizing acoustic imaging and surgical applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The polarization rotation effect.

References

  1. Kutnjak, Z., Petzelt, J. & Blinc, R. Nature 441, 956–959 (2006).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Cohen, R. E. Nature 358, 136–138 (1992).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Ye, Z. G. et al. Phys. Rev. B 67, 104104 (2003).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Burton, B. P., Cockayne, E. & Waghmare, U. V. Phys. Rev. B 72, 064113 (2005).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Jeong, I. K. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 147602 (2005).

    Article  ADS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Vakhrushev, S. B. & Shapiro, S. M. Phys. Rev. B 66, 214101 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Burns, G. & Dacol, F. H. Phys. Rev. B 28, 2527–2530 (1983).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Fu, H. & Cohen, R. E. Nature 403, 281–283 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Garcia, A. & Vanderbilt, D. Appl. Phys. Lett. 72, 2981–2983 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Noheda, B. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3891–3894 (2001).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Chien, R. R., Schmidt, V. H., Tu, C. -S., Hung, L. W. & Luo, H. Phys. Rev. B 69, 172101 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Samara, G. A. & Venturini, E. L. Phase Transitions 79, 21–40 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Wu, Z. & Cohen, R. E. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 037601 (2005).

    Article  ADS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Nakhmanson, S. M., Rabe, K. M. & Vanderbilt, D. Phys. Rev. B 73, 1–4 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Dawber, M. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 1–4 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. King-Smith, R. D. & Vanderbilt, D. Phys. Rev. B 47, 1651–1654 (1993).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Resta, R. Rev. Mod. Phys. 66, 899–915 (1994).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5251 Broad Branch Road, NW, 20015, Washington DC, USA

    R. E. Cohen

Authors
  1. R. E. Cohen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cohen, R. Relaxors go critical. Nature 441, 941–942 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/441941a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/441941a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing