Strontium titanate

Strontium titanate is an oxide of strontium and titanium with the chemical formula SrTiO3. At room temperature, it is a centrosymmetric paraelectric material with a perovskite structure. At low temperatures it approaches a ferroelectric phase transition with a very large dielectric constant ~104 but remains paraelectric down to the lowest temperatures measured as a result of quantum fluctuations, making it a quantum paraelectric. It was long thought to be a wholly artificial material, until 1982 when its natural counterpart—discovered in Siberia and named tausonite—was recognised by the IMA. Tausonite remains an extremely rare mineral in nature, occurring as very tiny crystals. Its most important application has been in its synthesized form wherein it is occasionally encountered as a diamond simulant, in precision optics, in varistors, and in advanced ceramics. Strontium titanate is an oxide of strontium and titanium with the chemical formula SrTiO3. At room temperature, it is a centrosymmetric paraelectric material with a perovskite structure. At low temperatures it approaches a ferroelectric phase transition with a very large dielectric constant ~104 but remains paraelectric down to the lowest temperatures measured as a result of quantum fluctuations, making it a quantum paraelectric. It was long thought to be a wholly artificial material, until 1982 when its natural counterpart—discovered in Siberia and named tausonite—was recognised by the IMA. Tausonite remains an extremely rare mineral in nature, occurring as very tiny crystals. Its most important application has been in its synthesized form wherein it is occasionally encountered as a diamond simulant, in precision optics, in varistors, and in advanced ceramics. The name tausonite was given in honour of Lev Vladimirovich Tauson (1917–1989), a Russian geochemist. Disused trade names for the synthetic product include strontium mesotitanate, Fabulite, Diagem, and Marvelite. Other than its type locality of the Murun Massif in the Sakha Republic, natural tausonite is also found in Cerro Sarambi, Concepción department, Paraguay; and along the Kotaki River of Honshū, Japan. SrTiO3 has an indirect band gap of 3.25 eV and a direct gap of 3.75 eV in the typical range of semiconductors.Synthetic strontium titanate has a very large dielectric constant (300) at room temperature and low electric field. It has a specific resistivity of over 109 Ω-cm for very pure crystals. It is also used in high-voltage capacitors. Introducing mobile charge carriers by doping leads to Fermi-liquid metallic behavior already at very low charge carrier densities.At high electron densities strontium titanate becomes superconducting below 0.35 K and was the first insulator and oxide discovered to be superconductive. Strontium titanate is both much denser (specific gravity 4.88 for natural, 5.13 for synthetic) and much softer (Mohs hardness 5.5 for synthetic, 6-6.5 for natural) than diamond. Its crystal system is cubic and its refractive index (2.410—as measured by sodium light, 589.3 nm) is nearly identical to that of diamond (at 2.417), but the dispersion (the optical property responsible for the 'fire' of the cut gemstones) of strontium titanate is 4.3x that of diamond, at 0.190 (B–G interval). This results in a shocking display of fire compared to diamond and diamond simulants such as YAG, GAG, GGG, Cubic Zirconia, and Moissanite. Synthetics are usually transparent and colourless, but can be doped with certain rare earth or transition metals to give reds, yellows, browns, and blues. Natural tausonite is usually translucent to opaque, in shades of reddish brown, dark red, or grey. Both have an adamantine (diamond-like) lustre. Strontium titanate is considered extremely brittle with a conchoidal fracture; natural material is cubic or octahedral in habit and streaks brown. Through a hand-held (direct vision) spectroscope, doped synthetics will exhibit a rich absorption spectrum typical of doped stones. Synthetic material has a melting point of ca. 2080 °C (3776 °F) and is readily attacked by hydrofluoric acid. Under extremely low oxygen partial pressure, strontium titanate decomposes via incongruent sublimation of strontium well below the melting temperature. At temperatures lower than 105 K, its cubic structure transforms to tetragonal. Its monocrystals can be used as optical windows and high-quality sputter deposition targets. SrTiO3 is an excellent substrate for epitaxial growth of high-temperature superconductors and many oxide-based thin films. It is particularly well known as the substrate for the growth of the lanthanum aluminate-strontium titanate interface. Doping strontium titanate with niobium makes it electrically conductive, being one of the only conductive commercially available single crystal substrates for the growth of perovskite oxides. Its bulk lattice parameter of 3.905Å makes it suitable as the substrate for the growth of many other oxides, including the rare-earth manganites, titanates, lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3), strontium ruthenate (SrRuO3) and many others. Oxygen vacancies are fairly common in SrTiO3 crystals and thin films. Oxygen vacancies induce free electrons in the conduction band of the material, making it more conductive and opaque. These vacancies can be caused by exposure to reducing conditions, such as high vacuum at elevated temperatures. High-quality, epitaxial SrTiO3 layers can also be grown on silicon without forming silicon dioxide, thereby making SrTiO3 an alternative gate dielectric material. This also enables the integration of other thin film perovskite oxides onto silicon. SrTiO3 has been shown to possess persistent photoconductivity where exposing the crystal to light will increase its electrical conductivity by over 2 orders of magnitude. After the light is turned off, the enhanced conductivity persists for several days, with negligible decay.