Aging in the relaxor ferroelectric (PbMn1/3Nb2/3O3)0.90(PbTiO3)0.10

The relaxor ferroelectric (PbMn1/3Nb2/3O3)(1-x)(PbTiO3)(x), x=0.1 [PMN/PT (90/10)], is found to exhibit several regimes of complicated aging behavior. Just below the susceptibility peak there is a regime exhibiting rejuvenation but little memory. At lower temperature, there is a regime with mainly cumulative aging, expected for simple domain growth. At still lower temperature, there is a regime with both rejuvenation and memory, reminiscent of spin glasses. PMN/PT (88/12) is also found to exhibit some of these aging regimes. This qualitative aging behavior is reminiscent of that seen in reentrant ferromagnets, which exhibit a crossover from a domain-growth ferromagnetic regime into a reentrant spin-glass regime at lower temperatures. These striking parallels suggest a picture of competition in PMN/PT (90/10) between ferroelectric correlations formed in the domain-growth regime with glassy correlations formed in the spin-glass regime. PMN/PT (90/10) is also found to exhibit frequency-aging time scaling of the time-dependent part of the out-of-phase susceptibility for temperatures 260 K and below. The stability of aging effects to thermal cycles and field perturbations is also reported. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.