Structural Magneto Electrical and Optical properties of Neodymium and Chromium Doped Bismuth ferrite Multiferroics

Abstract

Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3/BFO) has attracted research community due to their transitions which are above the room temperature. Bismuth ferrite is an inorganic chemical compound of bismuth, iron and oxygen with perovskite structure (ABO3 structure) and one of the promising multiferroic material at room temperature which is a type 1 multiferroic material in which both ferroelectricity and magnetism originate from the different cations i.e. ferroelectricity is originated from the 6s lone pair electrons of Bi ions and canted G type antiferromagnetic from the 3d electrons of Fe ions. The room temperature phase of BiFeO3 is classed as distorted rhombohedral (having three equal axes and oblique angles) belonging to the space group R3c. Doping in the sites of Bismuth and Iron has shown significant improvement or modification in its magnetic and electric properties. It is widely used in spintronics and memory storage devices and its low bandgap helps in photovoltaic and photocatalytic application. Bismuth Ferrite also encounters some drawbacks which limits its application due to difficulty in occurrence of BFO in single phase, secondary phase development during synthesis and elevated leakage current. Literature reveals that doping in the sites of Bismuth and Iron has shown significant improvement or modification in its properties. newlineIn this work, neodymium doped and neodymium, chromium co-doped samples of different dopant concentrations are prepared using conventional solid state reaction method. The variations in the electrical, magnetic, optical and magnetoelectric properties of the samples are studied. All the Nd doped samples exhibited distorted rhombohedral structure. The influence of structural ordering, presence of impurity phases, density and crystallite size on the dielectric properties can be strongly correlated. Regarding magnetic properties, the M-H curve shows xxii newlinefuller hysteresis loop, which narrows down as the doping concentration is increased. Doping with small concentrations of Nd can possibly tune..