Abstract
Crystalline materials with a non-centrosymmetric crystal structure exhibit several properties, e.g., optical nonlinearities and piezoelectric effects, that are readily employed in applications. Lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is such a frequently used crystal material. Quite recently, activities started to fabricate and study promising hybrid materials that contain LiNbO3 nanocrystals. It is the hope to combine, e.g., the optical nonlinearity of LiNbO3 with the ease of fabrication of polymers, just by adding the nanocrystals to the polymers. For this kind of hybrid material it is desirable to minimize the loss of light transmission by scattering; the nanocrystals should be as small as possible, while retaining all of their desired properties. But most of the knowledge about the properties of LiNbO3 was gained by examinations of bulk crystals. If the crystal size decreases down to the nanometer-scale, there are indications, that some of the symmetry-induced properties of the crystals may diminish or even vanish. E.g. for barium titanate it was shown that non-centrosymmetry-induced properties are lost if the crystal is smaller than a certain critical size, which was determined to be between 10 and 120 nm [1, 2].
© 2013 IEEE
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