Infrared spectra of hydrogen impurities in BaTiO₃ crystals

The IR spectra in the 2.8 μm region of the OH^- impurities in thick single domain crystals have been measured for different polarization geometries and various temperatures. Simple calculations of the Coulomb interactions between hydrogen and lattice ions show that these interactions are much more important than the hydrogen bonding ones for determining the positions of the hydrogen ions. The appearance of only one strong non-dichroic OH^- stretching line is due to an almost equal population of the proton axial sites. The side bands are interpreted as combinations of the stretching mode with a low-frequency translational mode. The large broadening of the main line just above T_c supports the model which attributes a considerable order-disorder character to the ferroelectric phase transition.