Abstract
The optical spectra of ions in congruent, (SBN) crystals have been systematically investigated in a broad temperature range . Laser site selective low temperature fluorescence spectra have shown that ions enter in four different cationic lattice sites. A thermal hysteresis in both bandwidth and luminescence intensity of ions has been detected in the temperature range around the ferro to paraelectric phase transition. This behavior has been explained as a result of the local structural modifications that take place around the ions when the crystal becomes nonpolar, which affect in a different way the luminescence of ions located in the different sites. Off-congruent SBN crystals activated with ions have been grown and investigated in order to examine the possibilities of extending the detected hysteretic behavior to other temperature ranges.
2 More- Received 19 July 2005
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.73.035119
©2006 American Physical Society