X-ray structural and optical studies of PbZrO0.598Ti0.042O3 single crystals in electric fields up to 4×107 V/m

Field dependences of the rhombohedral unit cell parameter a and birefringence of crystals of lead titanate zirconate with 4.2 mol % additions of Ti are found to be linear in the range from zero to 400 kV/cm. The linear and bulk expansions of the crystal in a field of 400 kV/cm are close to 0.25 and 0.7% respectively. The coefficient of the longitudinal piezoeffect f33 computed based on data from Fx-ray structural analysis exhibit a strong nonlinearity: it increases monotonically by a factor of 7–8 as the electric field increases from zero to 200 kV/cm, and reaches saturation at stronger fields.