On the effects of the heat generated during an electric field-induced ferroelectric domain switching

A ferroelectric material is characterized by its ability of changing the polar direction in the presence of applied electric field. This change of polar direction is called domain switching or polarization reversal. The domain switching occurs in two steps: the nucleation of new domain and the propagation of domain boundary. Recently, "Kim" (Kim, S.J., 2000. Int. 3. Solids Struct. 37, 1145-1164) has shown that a certain amount of heat is generated from a moving domain boundary during domain switching. In this paper, we study the effects of the heat generated from a moving domain boundary under an application of electric field. The finite difference algorithm of Kim and Abeyaratne (Kim, S.J., Abeyaratne, R., 1995. Cent. Mech. Thermo 7, 311-333) is applied to the model developed by Kim (2000). The results of calculation are qualitatively consistent with the experimental observation of Hill et al. (Hill, M.D., White, G.S., Hwang C.S., Lloyd I.K., 1996. J. Am. Ceram. Sec. 79, 1915-1920) (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.