Abstract
Most ferroelectric materials exhibit aging effect (a time dependent change of physical properties) in their ferroelectric state; however, aging is not reported to exist in the paraelectric state. In
this paper we report an unexpected finding: aging effect also exists in the paraelectric state of ferroelectric materials. We proposed a microscopic mechanism, which unifies both ferroelectric
aging and paraelectric aging effect. The paraelectric aging may provide a good chance for understanding the role of defects in ferroelectrics, because paraelectric state has no spontaneous
polarization and domain walls to complicate the interpretation.
