The temperature and electric field dependence of the specific heat of relaxor ferroelectrics and dipolar glasses is investigated by means of a Landau-type theoretical model. It is shown that the dipolar specific heat, which is due to the randomly interacting polar nanoregions in relaxors and electric dipoles in dipolar glasses, is negative in a temperature region below the permittivity maximum and its magnitude can be tuned by the external electric field. Also, it follows that for sufficiently low values of the field, where the induced polarization shows a quasi linear field dependence, the dipolar specific heat is proportional to the second temperature derivative of the dielectric polarization. This quantity can be extracted from the experimental temperature profile of the polarization, thus enabling an indirect experimental estimate of the negative specific heat, which is demonstrated for a set of representative relaxor and dipolar glass systems [1].
References
[1] Z. Kutnjak, R. Pirc, J. Appl. Phys. 121, in press (2017).