Elastic and Attenuation Studies of Some Rare Earth Substituted Multiferroic Bismuth Ferrites

Abstract

A series of rare earth substituted bismuth ferrites are prepared without any detectable impurity phase, by the solid‐state reaction method. The structural characterization of the samples is conducted using X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and bulk density studies. Later, the ultrasonic longitudinal (Vl) and shear wave (Vs) velocities are measured by the pulse transmission technique and using these values, the elastic moduli are calculated. As the materials are porous, zero porous elastic moduli have been computed using Hasselmann and Fulrath model. It is observed that the elastic moduli of samples are found to increase continuously with decreasing of ionic radii of the substituted element and the observed behavior is explained qualitatively. Finally, the attenuation coefficient values of all the samples are also calculated and are found to increase with decreasing of ionic radii of the rare earth substituted ion.