Hysteresis loops revisited: An efficient method to analyze ferroic materials

Abstract

Hysteresis loops characterize a wide variety of behaviors in fields ranging from physics and chemistry to economics and sociology. In particular, they represent the main characteristic of ferroic materials such as ferromagnetic and ferroelectric, which, in recent years, have attracted much interest due to their multifunctional properties. Although measuring such loops may not be experimentally complicated, extracting the intrinsic values of the characteristic parameters of the loop may prove difficult due to the different contributions to the measured hysteresis. In this paper, a simple technique is proposed to analyze hysteresis loops and to extract solely the contribution of the ferromagnetic or ferroelectric material. Such method consists in differentiating the measured loop, deconvoluting the different contributions and selectively integrating only the signals belonging to the ferroic response. A discussion of the limitations of the method is presented. Different measured ferromagnetic and ferroelectric hysteresis loops were also used to validate the technique. Comparison between experimental and reconstructed data demonstrated the precision and reliability of the technique. Moreover, application of such method allowed us to highlight properties of a Bi2FeCrO6 room temperature multiferroic thin film that were not previously observed.