Compensation for Ferroelectric Hysteresis Loop Distortion and Its Application to Phase Transition Studies

A compensation for ferroelectric hysteresis loop distortion has been developed and applied to some ferroelectric or antiferroelectric phase transitions. The distortion of loop has been numerically synthesized on the basis of an equivalent circuit and subtracted from the measured signal; in the calculation, nonlinearity of the circuit can be taken into account as necessary. Successful results were obtained in ferroelectrics near the second-order phase transition and in antiferroelectrics which show nonlinear conductivity or a nonlinear dielectric constant.