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Ferroelectric effect
Redirected from
Ferroelectricity
In
physics
, the
ferroelectric effect
is an
electrical phenomenon
whereby certain
crystals
may exhibit a spontaneous
dipole moment
(which is called ferroelectric by analogy with
ferromagnetic
- exhibiting a permanent
magnetic moment[?]
). The effect in the most typical case,
barium
titanate
, is due to a
polarization catastrophe[?]
, in which the local
electric fields
due to the polarization itself increase faster than the
elastic
restoring
forces
on the
ions
in the crystal, thereby leading to an asymmetrical shift in ionic positions and hence to a permanent dipole moment. Ferroelectric crystals often show several
Curie points
,
domain structure hysteresis[?]
, much as do ferromagnetic crystals.
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