Relaxation dynamics of lead-free (Na1/2Bi1/2)TiO3–BaTiO3 single crystals studied by Brillouin scattering

The acoustic properties of 0.95(Na1/2Bi1/2)TiO3–0.05BaTiO3 (NBT–0.05BT) single crystals were investigated in a hypersonic frequency range and compared to those of archetypal relaxor Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PMN). Temperature dependences of the Brillouin frequency shift of the longitudinal acoustic (LA) mode, as well as its half width, of NBT–5%BT and PMN exhibited diffuse and broad anomalies over a wide temperature range, which were related to the softening of the sound velocity and substantial increase in the hypersonic damping toward the dielectric maximum temperature. These broad acoustic anomalies of unpoled NBT–0.05BT suggest the existence of noncentrosymmetric polar nanoregions in the paraelectric phase which do not evolve into a long-range ferroelectric order. The calculated relaxation times of NBT–0.05BT exhibited much longer values compared to those of PMN, which suggests that the size of polar nanoregions of NBT–0.05BT is larger than that of PMN.