Sub-microsecond X-ray crystallography: techniques, challenges, and applications for materials science

Abstract

Dynamics of crystals is a subject of recent interest in solid-state physics and a challenge for modern X-ray crystallography. Time-dependent response of solids to an external perturbation on atomic and microstructural length scales is the key to understanding many physical properties. This paper reviews the challenges and opportunities for probing of sub-micro-, micro-, and millisecond dynamics of solids using the methods of X-ray crystallography. It starts with an overview of recent time-resolved X-ray diffraction techniques. It then focuses on the processes that are important for understanding functional materials: dynamics of ferroelectric and ferroelastic domain patterns, texture in piezoelectric ceramics, mechanical resonances in solids, and dynamics of structural disorder. Knowledge available from macroscopic experiments is summarized, and opportunities for X-ray crystallography to resolve existing controversies are presented. This paper suggests the possible synergy of macroscopic and X-ray crystallographic experimental techniques.

Keywords:

• time-resolved X-ray diffraction
• ferroic materials
• piezoelectrics
• microsecond dynamics

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges Ullrich Pietsch, Manuel Angst and Claudio Mazzoli for motivating discussions, and Andreas Biermanns and Lenka Randusova for proof-reading the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung).

Notes on contributors

Semën Gorfman is currently research fellow and lecturer at the University of Siegen, Germany. He studied physics and crystallography at the Chelyabinsk State University, Russia. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Siegen, supervised by Prof. Ullrich Pietsch and Prof. Vladimir Tsirelson; his thesis was devoted to single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments under external electric field. Between the years 2008 and 2011, he was a postdoc in the Ferroelectrics and Crystallography group at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests focus on X-ray and physical crystallography, the investigation of fine structure features of crystals, ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials, structural dynamics, and their role in material properties.