Coherent X -ray Diffraction for Domain Observation

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) speckle patterns from the ferroelectric material PZN-9%PT have been observed successfully by coherent x-ray diffraction. The 2D-FFT image of the speckle pattern gives us a spatial autocorrelation function which contains the information of the domain arrangement in the crystal within a few micrometers scale. By the complementary use of an optical microscope and SEM, it has been concluded that there are some scales of higher-order structures (domains) from sub-J.tm to sub-mm in PZN-9%PT, i.e., a set of domains with a scale forms a higher order of domain. The nature of the pseudo-cubic X-phase is also discussed.