Determination of rhombohedral structure of BiFeO3 single-domain-like films grown on SrTiO3 and LaAlO3 substrates by X-ray diffraction using

Abstract

The crystal structure of bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3; BFO) epitaxial films was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) using a two-dimensional detector. The diffraction spots hex (hexagonal notation was used for the rhombohedral structure in this study) specific to the rhombohedral structure (space group: R3c), which clearly separated from the diffractions in other crystal symmetries of BFO, was used for determining the crystal symmetry. The BFO films on the SrTiO3 substrates were unambiguously identified as R3c with the hex diffraction spot, whereas highly strained BFO films (space group: Cm) on the LaAlO3 substrates did not show the diffraction spot. The structure of a single-domain-like sample with R3c could not be determined using variants, i.e., degrees of freedom for crystal orientation, whereas the Bragg’s diffraction of hex can be used to unambiguously distinguish R3c from other space groups. It was proposed that electron diffraction complemented by nondestructive and high-resolution XRD is highly effective to obtain wide-area reciprocal space information for identifying low-symmetric-complex materials such as BFO.