Response of TGS ferroelectric samples to rapid temperature impulses

•We discovered the existence of some amount of order in the paraelecric phase in TGS single crystals.•It may be caused by various factors such as structural defects.•This effect can be responsible for the shift and blur in the critical temperature upon heating and cooling.•Simple order-disorder explanation of the phase transition in real TGS is not sufficient and requires further experimentation.

Tryglicine sulphate (TGS) is one of the most extensively studied ferroelectric materials, which undergoes second order phase transition and shows the pyroelectric effect. In our present experiments we study the electric properties of TGS, in relation to domain switching, observing the samples’ response to controlled temperature pulses. The charge released in the processes of domain switching was previously studied under constant temperature growth. Our method allows us to observe the released pyroelectric charge in both the ferroelectric and paraelectric phases. To perform our experiment we designed new measurement software and constructed a novel thermostatic sample holder containing Peltier’s cells as heating/cooling elements.