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Very sensitive responses to external forces are found near phase transitions. However, phase transition dynamics and pre-equilibrium phenomena are difficult to detect and control. We have directly observed that the equilibrium domain structure following a phase transition in BaTiO3, a ferroelectric and ferroelastic material, is attained by halving of the domain periodicity, sequentially and multiple times. The process is reversible, displaying periodicity doubling as temperature is increased. This observation is backed theoretically and can explain the fingerprints of domain period multiplicity observed in other systems, strongly suggesting this as a general model for pattern formation during phase transitions in ferroelastic materials.
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Liquids and solids are two fundamental states of matter. However, due to the lack of direct experimental determination, our understanding of the 3D atomic structure of liquids and amorphous solids remained speculative. Here we advance atomic electron tomography to determine for the first time the 3D atomic positions in monatomic amorphous materials, including a Ta thin film and two Pd nanoparticles. We observe that pentagonal bipyramids are the most abundant atomic motifs in these amorphous materials. Instead of forming icosahedra, the majority of pentagonal bipyramids arrange into networks that extend to medium-range scale. Molecular dynamic simulations further reveal that pentagonal bipyramid networks are prevalent in monatomic amorphous liquids, which rapidly grow in size and form icosahedra during the quench from the liquid state to glass state. The experimental method and results are expected to advance the study of the amorphous-crystalline phase transition and glass transition at the single-atom level.
Using in-situ transmission electron microscopy, we have directly observed nano-scale defects formed in ultra-high purity tungsten by low-dose high energy self-ion irradiation at 30K. At cryogenic temperature lattice defects have reduced mobility, so these microscope observations offer a window on the initial, primary damage caused by individual collision cascade events. Electron microscope images provide direct evidence for a power-law size distribution of nano-scale defects formed in high-energy cascades, with an upper size limit independent of the incident ion energy, as predicted by Sand et al. [Eur. Phys. Lett., 103:46003, (2013)]. Furthermore, the analysis of pair distribution functions of defects observed in the micrographs shows significant intra-cascade spatial correlations consistent with strong elastic interaction between the defects.
We propose a new unfolding scheme to analyze energy spectra of complex large-scale systems which are inherently of multi-periodicity. Considering twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) as an example, we first show that the conventional unfolding scheme in the past using a single primitive-cell representation causes serious problems in analyses of the energy spectra. We then introduce our multi-space representation scheme in the unfolding method and clarify its validity for tBLG. Velocity renormalization of Dirac electrons in tBLG is elucidated in the present unfolding scheme.
Compared to AgNbO3 based ceramics, the experimental investigations on the single crystalline AgNbO3, especially the ground state and ferroic domain structures, are not on the same level. Here in this work, based on successfully synthesized AgNbO3 single crystal using flux method, we observed the coexistence of ferroelastic and ferrielectric domain structures by a combination study of polarized light microscopy and piezoresponse force microscope, this finding may provide a new aspect for studying AgNbO3. The result also suggests a weak electromechanical response from the ferrielectric phase of AgNbO3 which is also supported by the transmission electron microscope characterization. Our results reveal that the AgNbO3 single crystal is in a polar ferrielectric phase at room temperature, clarifying its ground state which is controversial from the AgNbO3 ceramic materials.
Magnetic materials with giant saturation magnetization have been a holy grail for magnetic researchers and condensed matter physicists for decades because of its great scientific and technological impacts. As described by the famous Slater-Pauling curve the material with highest Ms is the Fe65Co35 alloy. This was challenged in 1972 by a report on the compound Fe16N2 with Ms much higher than that of Fe65Co35. Following this claim, there have been enormous efforts to reproduce this result and to understand the magnetism of this compound. However, the reported Ms by different groups cover a broad range, mainly due to the unavailability of directly assessing Ms in Fe16N2. In this article, we report a direct observation of the giant saturation magnetization up to 2500 emu/cm3 using polarized neutron reflectometry (PNR) in epitaxial constrained Fe16N2 thin films prepared using a low-energy and surface-plasma-free sputtering process. The observed giant Ms is corroborated by a previously proposed Cluster + Atom model, the characteristic feature of which, namely, the directional charge transfer is evidenced by polarization-dependent x-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES).
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