Abstract:
With infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) ellipsometry we investigated the anisotropy of the IR-active phonon modes in SrTiO3 (110) single crystals in the tetragonal state below the so-called antiferrodistortive transition at T∗=105 K. In particular, we show that the anisotropy of the oscillator strength of the so-called R mode, which becomes weakly IR active below T∗, is a valuable indicator of the orientation of the structural domains. Our results reveal that a monodomain state with the tetragonal axis (c axis) parallel to the [001] direction can be created by applying a moderate uniaxial stress of about 2.3 MPa along the [1-10] direction (with a simple mechanical clamp). The resulting splitting of the IR-active phonon modes is reported.