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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
The one-dimensional free energy model for ferroelectric materials developed in [1-3] is general-ized to two dimensions. The proposed two-dimensional energy potential consists of four energy wells corresponding to four variants of the material, four saddle points representing the barriers for 900 switching processes, and a local energy maximum across which 1800-switching processes take place. The free energy potential is combined with the evolution equations based on the theory of thermally activated processes. The prediction of the model is compared with the recent measurements on a Ba- TiO3 single crystalline ferroelectric in [4]. The responses of the model at various loading frequencies are calculated and the kinetics of 900 and 1800 switching processes are discussed.