Abstract
Perovskite materials that contain transition metal-oxides often exhibit multifunctional properties with considerable utility in a device setting. BiFeO3 is a multiferroic perovskite material that exhibits room temperature anti-ferromagnetic and ferroelectric ordering. Optical excitation of BiFeO3 crystals results in an elastic structural deformation of the lattice with a fast response on the pico-second time scale. Here we report on dynamic optical excitation coupled with Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction measurements to investigate the structural properties of BiFeO3 nanoscale crystals. A continuous distortion of the diffraction speckle pattern was observed with increasing illumination. This was attributed to strain resulting from photo-induced lattice deformation.
Highlights
Transition metal oxides with perovskite crystal structure are emerging as enabling materials for generation photovoltaics, power electronics, energy harvesting, light emitting diodes and multiferroic devices.[1,2,3]
Coexistence of antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric ordering is generally observed in perovskite structures where the ferroelectric displacement from centrosymmetry occurs in the non-magnetic ion
Two-dimensional speckle patterns in the absence of laser illumination and with maximum laser illumination are shown in figure 1(a) and (b)
Summary
Transition metal oxides with perovskite crystal structure are emerging as enabling materials for generation photovoltaics, power electronics, energy harvesting, light emitting diodes and multiferroic devices.[1,2,3]. Bismuth Ferrite (BiFeO3) is a perovskite metal-oxide semiconducting material with a band-gap of 2.8 eV that shows both antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric ordering at room temperature due to its two differing Fe-O bond lengths. Light-mediated photostriction is observed in BiFeO3 with magnitude dependent on the intensity and polarisation of the impinging light.[4]
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