Room-Temperature Plastic Deformation of Strontium Titanate Crystals Grown from Different Chemical Compositions

Oxide materials have the potential to exhibit superior mechanical properties in terms of high yield point, high melting point, and high chemical stability. Despite this, they are not widely used as a structural material due to their brittle nature. However, this study shows enhanced room-temperature plasticity of strontium titanate (SrTiO3) crystals through the control of the chemical composition. It is shown that the deformation behavior of SrTiO3 crystals at room temperature depends on the Sr/Ti ratio. It was found that flow stresses in deforming SrTiO3 crystals grown from a powder with the particular ratio of Sr/Ti = 1.04 are almost independent of the strain rate because of the high mobility of dislocations in such crystals. As a result, the SrTiO3 crystals can deform by dislocation slip up to a strain of more than 10%, even at a very high strain rate of 10% per second. It is thus demonstrated that SrTiO3 crystals can exhibit excellent plasticity when chemical composition in the crystal is properly controlled