https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00252-x
Effect of chemical modification on the structure and dielectric and magnetic properties of multiferroic (1 – x)BiFeO3-xDyFeO3 solid solution
1
Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada
2
Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, P.R. China
Corresponding authors: a zye@sfu.ca - b wren@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
Received:
7
March
2009
Revised:
19
April
2009
Published online:
21
July
2009
The solid solution of (1-x)BiFeO3-xDyFeO3 was prepared by solid state reactions in the form of ceramics. The effects of chemical modification by means of aliovalent ionic substitution of Ti4+ for Fe3+ on the structure and dielectric properties were investigated. A morphotropic phase boundary bridging the perovskite rhombohedral phase and the orthoferrite orthorhombic phase was identified at x around 0.1. The chemical modification was found to stabilize the perovsite phase. The dielectric performance of the solid solution was improved by the substitution of Ti4+ for Fe3+, which decreased the electric conductivity by reducing oxygen vacancies, as evidenced by the decrease in loss tangent values. Magnetic hysteresis and large saturated magnetization (0.5 μB/f.u.) were realized in 0.92BiFeO3-0.08DyFeO3 with 2% substitution of Ti4+ for Fe3+, which is believed to arise from the disruption of the spiral spin modulation after structural modification, and the interaction between the spins of the Dy3+ and Fe3+ at low temperatures which decouples the antiferromagnetic order between the Fe3+ ions.
PACS: 61.05.Cp – X-ray diffraction / 75.60.Ej – Magnetization curves, hysteresis, Barkhausen and related effects / 77.22.Ch – Permittivity / 77.80.Bh – Phase transitions and Curie point
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2009