Elastic Properties of Piezoelectric & Relaxor Ferroelectric Crystals

Piezoelectric crystals play an important role in our day to day technologically advanced world. In this book the elastic properties of two distinct groups of piezoelectric crystals are presented: one with small piezoelectric properties for eg. natural tourmaline; while on the other hand with huge piezoelectric constants i.e. Czochralski grown pure and cerium doped relaxor ferroelectric calcium barium niobate (Ca0.28Ba0.72Nb2O6 hereafter CBN-28) exhibiting a ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition. To this end a non-destructive innovative method of resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS) was employed. Evidence of the existance of Burns temperature in CBN-28 type relaxor has been reported for the first time.