Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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DF: Fachverband Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 9: Poster Session DF

DF 9.6: Poster

Tuesday, April 1, 2014, 18:30–20:00, P1

Monte Carlo Simulations of the Electrocaloric Effect in Relaxor Ferroelectrics — •Constanze Kalcher, Alexander Stukowski, and Karsten Albe — Institut für Materialwissenschaft, TU Darmstadt, Germany

Relaxor ferroelectrics (RFEs) are a promising material class for cooling devices based on the electrocaloric effect.

It is widely accepted, that polar nanoregions and quenched random fields arising from disorder in the atomic structure are inherent features of RFEs. However, their interplay is not yet fully understood.

Here we present the results of lattice based Monte Carlo simulations. We model a relaxor ferroelectric with a Random-Bond-Random-Field Ising model and study its behavior in an electric field using Wang-Landau sampling and a demon algorithm after Creutz. This allows us to predict the electrocaloric effect in the model material. Finally the results of the direct methods are compared with the indirect approach via the Maxwell equation.