Structural and magnetic behavior of CTAB assisted BiFeO3 by self-combustion route

Abstract

Abstract With a large number of published articles, Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3, BFO) is one of the most studied multiferroic materials, and offers the great possibilities for industrial and technological applications. The prime motivation to conduct the present research is: BFO has poor magnetic behavior due to the wide difference between its Neel and Curie temperature, at bulk scale. Herein, we report the enhanced magnetic properties of BFO, by an interplay of structure assisting agent, CTAB. A facile synthesis route, sol–gel autocombustion method was adopted to materialise the multiferroic BFO product. The obtained BFOs (pristine as well as CTAB assisted BFO), were analyzed using XRD, SEM, and VSM. As developed BFOs showed rhombohedral crystal structure having space group R3c, with some impurity phases. The morphological analysis of BFOs displayed agglomerates of small particles having an irregular shape and size, which are typical in autocombustion synthesis route. At room temperature, both BFOs (pristine and CTAB assisted BFO) exhibited the characteristic magnetic hysteresis loop which confirms the ferromagnetic nature. It was observed that CTAB played an important role in an enhancement of magnetic properties (saturation magnetization (Ms), remanence (Mr) and coercivity (Hc)). Therefore, the obtained synthetic protocol of developing BFO using CTAB have a great potential in view of improved magnetic properties of BFO material based applications.