A comparative investigation on structure and multiferroic properties of bismuth ferrite thin films by multielement co-doping

•Multielement (Tb, Cr and Mn) co-doped BiFeO3 films were fabricated by CSD method.•Multielement co-doping induces a structural transition.•It is found effective to stabilize the valence of Fe ions at +3 by the strategy.•The co-doping at A/B-sites gives rise to the superior multiferroic properties.

(Tb, Cr and Mn) multielement co-doped BiFeO3 (BTFCMO) thin films were prepared by the chemical solution deposition method on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates. X-ray diffraction, Rietveld refinement and Raman analyses revealed that a phase transition from rhombohedral to triclinic structure occurs in the multielement co-doped BiFeO3 films. It is found that the doping is conducive to stabilizing the valence of Fe ions and reducing leakage current. In addition, the highly enhanced ferroelectric properties with a huge remanent polarization (2Pr) of 239.6 μC/cm2 and a low coercive field (2Ec) of 615.6 kV/cm are ascribed to the well film texture, the structure transition and the reduced leakage current by the co-doping. Moreover, the structure transition is the dominant factor resulting in the significant enhancement observed in magnetization (Ms ∼ 10.5 emu/cm3), owing to the collapse of the space-modulated spin structure. In this contribution, these results demonstrate that the multielement co-doping is in favor of the enhanced multiferroic properties of the BFO films for possible multifunctional applications.

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