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Effect of La/Cr codoping on structural transformation, leakage, dielectric and magnetic properties of BiFeO3 ceramics

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Abstract

BiFeO3 (BFO) and Bi1−x La x Fe0.9Cr0.1O3 (x = 0.1–0.2, BLFC x=0.1–0.2) ceramics were prepared by modified solid-state reaction. The influence of La/Cr codoping on the microstructure, leakage, dielectric and magnetic properties of BFO was studied. It is found that the La/Cr codoping can induce a structural transformation from a rhombohedral (R3c) phase to a triclinic (P1) phase, suppress the formation of oxygen vacancies and modulate the spiral spin structure. With the increasing La concentration, the leakage current density can be diminished by over two orders of magnitude compared with undoped BFO, in a reasonable range for device applications. The dielectric loss follows almost the same trend as the leakage current, while the dielectric constant is raised to 400.8 at 100 kHz for x = 0.2, over eight times larger than that of undoped BFO. The substantially enhanced magnetization can be mainly attributed to the suppression of the spiral spin structure and a new ferromagnetic Fe3+–O2−–Cr3+ super-exchange interaction. More interestingly, abrupt changes are observed around x = 0.15, not only in microstructure but also in electrical and magnetic properties, which may indirectly reflect the coupling effect among them. The BLFC x=0.2 ceramic shows the highest magnetization and dielectric constant together with the lowest leakage current and dielectric loss. The results indicate that the La/Cr codoping can effectively improve the magnetic and electrical properties of BFO ceramic for potential applications in magnetoelectric devices.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge financial assistances from Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 16ZR1424300), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11004134 and 61674106), Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (No. 13YZ064) and Funding of Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 15PJ1406500).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material and Device, and Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, People’s Republic of China

    Fangting Lin, Qiqi Yu, Linyan Deng, Zhengjian Zhang, Xiaoyong He, Aiyun Liu & Wangzhou Shi

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  1. Fangting Lin
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Lin, F., Yu, Q., Deng, L. et al. Effect of La/Cr codoping on structural transformation, leakage, dielectric and magnetic properties of BiFeO3 ceramics. J Mater Sci 52, 7118–7129 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-017-0947-3

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