Application of x-ray fluorescence holography to a single grain in polycrystalline ferroelectric ceramics.

Abstract

X-ray fluorescence holography (XFH) was, for the first time, applied to a polycrystalline system in order to visualize local structures within a single grain in the system using an x-ray microbeam. XFH was performed on (Ba,Ca)(Zr,Ti)O3 (BCZT) piezoelectric ceramic as the polycrystalline system in the normal mode with a two-dimensional detector. After data acquisition and processing, we obtained a Zr-Kα hologram from the BCZT ceramic. The Kossel lines were clearly observed, which were in good agreement with our simulated results, although there is a possibility that the hologram is contaminated by the signals from other surrounding grains. Furthermore, we confirmed that several atomic images reconstructed from the obtained Zr-Kα hologram can be related to the Ti atoms around Zr in the real space plane. These results clearly demonstrate the applicability of XFH to polycrystalline samples, which significantly expands the potential use of this technique for micro- or mesoscopic research in materials science.