Science Daily  September 3, 2019 An international team of researchers (The Netherlands, USA – Pennsylvania State University, Spain, UK) observed a structural transition in the ferroelastic material barium titanate. The unit cells in these crystals are elongated creating an elastic strain that reduces the crystal stability. Increasing the temperature increases the entropy in the material. Cooling the material reduces the periodicity of the domains by repeated halving. They have shown that the behaviour observed in the ferroelastic barium titanate is generic for ferroic materials. Doubling of domains creates a structure similar to the bifurcating dendrites connecting the pyramidal cells in […]