Real time in situ x-ray diffraction study of the crystalline structure modification of Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 during the post-annealing

Sondes Bauer; Adriana Rodrigues; Tilo Baumbach

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30392-y

Real time in situ x-ray diffraction study of the crystalline structure modification of Ba_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃ during the post-annealing

Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 10;8(1):11969. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30392-y.

Authors

Sondes Bauer¹, Adriana Rodrigues², Tilo Baumbach^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation IPS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, D-76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany. sondes.bauer@kit.edu.
² Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation IPS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, D-76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
³ Laboratory for Application of Synchrotron Radiation LAS, Kaiserstraße 12 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Abstract

We report about an in situ study of crystalline structural changes during thermal treatment of a Ba_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃ (BSTO) film grown on MgO. The study covers the complete cycle of heating, annealing and cooling and reveals simultaneous phenomena of phase transitions and strain evolution, which have been characterized by in situ 2D reciprocal space mapping (2D-RSM) using high-resolution synchrotron x-ray diffraction in coplanar and grazing incidence geometries. In this way, temperature induced phase transformation from the BSTO2 to the BSTO1 phase has been monitored and the appearance of a further crystalline phase was detected. Moreover, for both BSTO phases, transitions between in-plane compressive and tensile states have been determined during thermal treatment. Furthermore, a contraction of the out-of-plane lattice components has been observed during the annealing phase while the in-plane lattice components remain leading to the change of the residual in-plane strain towards tensile state. The in situ 2D-RSM findings provide valuable and versatile insights into strain engineering and structure modification upon thermal treatment.