| Birefringence study of the irreversible behavior of the incommensurate phase of quartz: effects of chemical impurities (1990) | |||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||
| A systematic study of the variations of the irreversible properties of the incommensurate phase of quartz has been performed by birefringence measurements in 9 samples (either synthetic or natural) of various compositions determined by chemical analysis and infrared spectroscopy. The shift of the α-β transition temperature for large impurity concentrations has been verified. The properties of the incommensurate phase are very sensitive to small changes of impurity contents : a global hysteresis going from 10 to 220 mK has been correlated to the OH infrared absorption. Time dependent pinning steps and memory effects have been observed showing the importance of mobile impurities. Finally a regime of discontinuous variation of physical properties appears for slow rate of temperature variations. These results have been discussed in relation to various theoretical models and in particular to the theory of the Defect Density Wave, induced by the diffusion of mobile impurities. | |||||||||||||||
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