Superelastic Softening of Ferroelastic Multidomain Crystals

Many proper and improper ferroelastic materials display (at sufficiently low measurement frequencies) a huge elastic softening below T-c. This giant elastic softening, which can be suppressed with uniaxial stress, is caused by domain wall motion. Here we shortly review our results on frequency and temperature dependent elastic measurements of perovskites which exhibit improper ferroelastic phase transitions. We also present a new model - based on Landau-Ginzburg theory including long range interaction of needle shaped ferroelastic domains - which describes superelastic softening observed in many of the perovskite systems very well. We also show how the theory can be extended to proper ferroelastic materials and apply it to describe the elastic behaviour of the proper ferroelastic material La1-xNdxP5O14 (LNPP).