Annealing temperature mediated physical properties of bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) nanostructures synthesized by a novel wet chemical method

• This study introduces a novel wet chemical method to synthesis bismuth ferrite nanostructures.
• Investigates the effect of annealing temperature on phase, morphology and physical properties.
• Bismuth ferrite flowers obtained for the first time in such our facile method.
• Reveals that the secondary phase and morphology of bismuth ferrite influence its optical property.
• Weak ferromagnetism obtained for the bismuth ferrite annealed at 550 °C which is attributed to oxygen vacancy defects.

This study reports the synthesis of bismuth ferrite (BFO) by a facile wet chemical hydro-evaporation (HE) method and the effect of different annealing temperatures (450 °C, 550 °C and 650 °C) on the phase evolution, morphology, physical properties of the synthesized BFO. It is observed that the BFO phase is formed at all the three annealing temperature and the morphology is found to be flowers and spherical. Magnetization studies revealed that the BFO formed at 450 °C and 650 °C exhibits its typical anti-ferromagnetic nature while the BFO formed at 550 °C exhibits weak ferromagnetic nature. The observed weak ferromagnetism in BFO owes to the point defects associated with oxygen vacancy defects as well as the smaller size effect. The possible origin of the enhancement in magnetic property has been explained with a suitable model in terms of particle size and defects in the material.

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