Abstract
The influence of the development of a ferroelectric state on the elastic properties of KTa1-xNbxO3 relaxor crystals is explored. The high sensitivity of all elements of the elastic stiffness tensor to the polar distortions and their reorientational dynamics is, however, individual for each particular
element: c11 and c44 are pimarily influenced by the reorientational motion of these distortions between neighboring (111) directions; the c12 mostly depends on the reorientations between cubic face diagonal (111) directions. Consequently, the temperature behavior of c12 demonstrates different
dependence on the Nb concentration than that of c11 and c44. While in the 1.2% Nb crystal all three elastic constants clearly show their softening with the appearance of the dynamic polar distortions; in the 16% crystal this effect is strong for c11 and c44, but negligible for c12. The curves of slowness and Young's modulus within (100) crystallographic plane are presented. The linear compressibility modulus is estimated. The value of the Debye temperature is estimated to be approximately 592 K.