Magneto-structural study of the multiferroic BiFeO3–SrTiO3

•The paper reports magneto-structural study of BiFeO3–SrTiO3 multiferroic.•Evidence of magneto-elastic coupling near the Neel temperature is shown.•The magnetization anomaly at 30 mol% SrTiO3 occurs within the rhombohedral phase.

The structural and magnetic study of the pseudo-binary multiferroic (1−x)BiFeO3−(x)SrTiO3has been investigated as a function of composition and temperature. In contrary to the previous studies, detailed examination revealed that the reported anomaly in the magnetization at x–0.30 does not occur at the composition induced rhombohedral–cubic phase boundary, but within the rhombohedral phase itself. The rhombohedral to cubic transition occurs at x>0.4. Evidence of magneto-elastic coupling near the Neel temperature and nucleation-growth mode of the rhombohedral–cubic transformation, with both the phases coexisting over a range of temperature was found.