Multiferroic bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) nanopowders have been obtained in room temperature by mechanical synthesis. Depending on the post-synthesis processing the nanopowders have exhibited differences in the mean sizes, presence of amorphous layer and/or secondary phases. Extended magnetic study performed for fresh, annealed and hot-pressed nanopowders have revealed substantial improvement of the magnetic properties in the as-prepared powder.
The process of magnetic relaxation was studied in bismuth ferrite BiFeO3 multiferroic micro-cubes obtained by means of microwave assisted Pechini process. Two different mechanisms of relaxation were found. The first one is a rapid magnetic relaxation driven by the domain reorientations and/or pinning and motion of domain walls. This mechanism is also responsible for the irreversible properties at low temperatures. The power-law decay of the magnetic moment confirms that this relaxation takes place in the system of weakly interacting ferromagnetic or superferromagnetic domains. The second mechanism is a longterm weak magnetic relaxation due to spin glass-phase.
This study reports on the synthesis of ball-like bismuth ferrite BiFeO3 nanoflowers by means of microwave assisted hydrothermal process and also on their composition and mechanism of growth. It turns out that the petals of the nanoflowers are composed of the nanocrystals with the size about 35-39 nm whereas their thickness and size depends on the concentration of surfactants. The petals contain BiFeO3 phase and traces of Bi2O3 oxide and metallic Bi and Fe deposited mainly at their surface. Amounts of impurity phases are more pronounced in nanoflowers synthesized during short time, and become almost negligible for longer microwave processing. The nanoflowers contain also mixed Fe valence, with the Fe2+/Fe3+ ratio depending on the time of synthesis. The growth and shape of the nanoflowers result from the process of diffusion in the initial stages of hydrothermal reaction.
We synthesized bismuth - cobalt oxide doped by erbium with general formula Bi3-xErxCoO3-y. Compound has structure of delta-form bismuth oxide. Magnetic properties of the compound were measured by Faradays method using quartz scales in the temperature range of 80-500 K. The magnetic susceptibility and effective magnetic moment were calculated.
We report on the magnetic properties of zinc ferrite thin film deposited on SrTiO$_3$ single crystal using pulsed laser deposition. X-ray diffraction result indicates the highly oriented single phase growth of the film along with the presence of the strain. In comparison to the bulk antiferromagnetic order, the as-deposited film has been found to exhibit ferrimagnetic ordering with a coercive field of 1140~Oe at 5~K. A broad maximum, at $approx$105~K, observed in zero-field cooled magnetization curve indicates the wide grain size distribution for the as-deposited film. Reduction in magnetization and blocking temperature has been observed after annealing in both argon as well as oxygen atmospheres, where the variation was found to be dependent on the annealing temperature.
There is a profound analogy between inhomogeneous magnetoelectric effect in multiferroics and flexoelectric effect in liquid crystals. This similarity gives rise to the flexomagnetoelectric polarization induced by spin modulation. The theoretical estimations of flexomagnetoelectric polarization agree with the value of jumps of polarization in magnetoelectric dependences (~20muC/m^2) observed at spin cycloid suppression at critical magnetic field 200kOe.