Effect of Gadolinium Substitution on Dielectric Properties of Bismuth Ferrite

Multiferroic Bi1-xGdxFeO3 (x =0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2) ceramics were prepared by conventional solid state reaction method. X-ray diffraction was carried out to characterize the crystal structure and to detect any possible impurities existing in these ceramics. Frequency dependence of dielectric properties of Bi1-xGdxFeO3 samples at room temperature was measured in a frequency range from 100 Hz to 1 MHz using an HP4294A precision impedance analyzer. For all the samples studied, the dielectric constant and dielectric loss decreases with increasing frequency in the range between 100 Hz and 1 MHz, as can be expected from a typical orientational dielectric relaxation process. There is no indication of any dips over the whole frequency range studied, which is in direct contrast with that reported previously. It is found that both dielectric constant and dielectric loss are strongly dependent on the Gd3+ content. The effect of introducing Gd3+ is to increase the dielectric constant and to decrease the dielectric loss for slightly doped sample Bi0.95Gd0.05FeO3: the dielectric constant of the sample at 1 kHz reaches 600, six times bigger than that for pure BiFeO3. Complicated dielectric behaviors are observed at higher doping levels. Furthermore, the substitution of rare earth Gd for Bi helps to eliminate the impurity phase in BiFeO3 ceramics. There is strong evidence that both lattice constants a and c of the unit cell become smaller as the Gd3+ content is increased. The dielectric constant and loss and their frequency responses can be varied dramatically by substitution of Gd.