Giant responses over wide temperature ranges in relaxor ferroelectrics remain a puzzling phenomenon in solid state physics. Rapid-quenching x-ray diffraction demonstrates pronounced kinetic suppression of macroscopic structural ordering in ($1-x$)Pb(${\mathrm{Mg}}_{1/3}{\mathrm{Nb}}_{2/3}$)${\mathrm{O}}_3\text{−}x{\mathrm{PbTiO}}_3$ near the morphotropic phase boundary. Independently, neutron scattering reveals scale-free spatial and temporal correlations of polar nanoregions over the temperature range associated with the giant dielectric response. Taken together, these observations support a kinetic picture in which sluggish structural ordering allows near-critical relaxor fluctuations to persist over an extended temperature range.

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• Phonons
• Fractals
• Relaxor ferroelectrics
• Quasi elastic neutron scattering
• Small angle neutron scattering
• X-ray diffraction