Competing ferroic oder parameters in SrTiO3: Domain behaviour and switching behaviour

Strontium titanate (SrTiO3) is a well-known member of the perovskite family. It exhibits an antiferrodistortive phase transition at 105 K leading to a tetragonal paraelectric phase with three different structural domains. At low temperatures a polar phase can be induced by the application of an electric field. In this thesis, the influence of electric fields and mechanical stresses on the domain distribution in SrTiO3 is investigated. An elastic neutron diffraction study of superlattice reflections provides quantitative information about the varying domain fractions. Moreover the kinetics of the field induced domain switching is investigated by stroboscopic neutron diffraction techniques. It is shown that the field induced domain redistribution occurs on a time-scale of microseconds if a uniaxial stress of several MPa is applied. The results are discussed with regard to domain walls in SrTiO3