Precursor Nanoscale Textures: from Tweed to Glassy Behaviour

We study spatially inhomogeneous states that occur as precursors of marten-sitic/ferroelastic transitions. We will show that cross-hatched modulations (tweed patterns)arise at temperatures above the phase transition in the limit of high elastic anisotropy or lowdisorder while a nano-cluster phase-separated state occurs at low anisotropy or high disorder.In the latter case, nanoscale inhomogeneities give rise to glassy behaviour while the structuraltransition is inhibited. Interestingly, in this case the ferroelastic system also displays a largethermo-mechanical response so that the low symmetry structure can be easily induced by theapplication of relatively small stresses within a broad temperature range.