Abstract
We report on the evolution of the magnetic structure of BiFeO3 thin films grown on SrTiO3 substrates as a function of Sm doping. We determined the magnetic structure using neutron diffraction. We found that as Sm increases, the magnetic structure evolves from a cycloid to a G-type antiferromagnet at the morphotropic phase boundary, where there is a large piezoelectric response due to an electric-field induced structural transition. The occurrence of the magnetic structural transition at the morphotropic phase boundary offers another route towards room temperature multiferroic devices.
Highlights
We report on the evolution of the magnetic structure of BiFeO3 thin films grown on SrTiO3 substrates as a function of Sm doping
We found that as Sm increases, the magnetic structure evolves from a cycloid to a G-type antiferromagnet at the morphotropic phase boundary, where there is a large piezoelectric response due to an electric-field induced structural transition
The occurrence of the magnetic structural transition at the morphotropic phase boundary offers another route towards room temperature multiferroic devices
Summary
Chemical substitution in BFO has been explored in order to improve the ferroelectric, piezoelectric, dielectric, and magnetic properties of the material.[5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] It has been demonstrated that the substitution of rare earth elements into the A-site of BFO thin films results in a structural phase transition from a ferroelectric rhombohedral phase to a paraelectric orthorhombic phase.[7,8,9,14,15] In the case of Sm, the transition occurs at ∼14% doping[17,18,19,20] at which point films exhibit a Morphotropic. Change in the magnetic structure of (Bi,Sm)FeO3 thin films at the morphotropic phase boundary probed by neutron diffraction
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