Electronic structure of multiferroic BiFeO3 by resonant soft x-ray emission spectroscopy

The electronic structure of multiferroic BiFeO3 has been studied using soft x-ray emission spectroscopy. The fluorescence spectra exhibit that the valence band is mainly composed of O 2p state hybridized with Fe 3d state. The band gap corresponding to the energy separation between the top of the 0 2p valence band and the bottom of the Fe 3d conduction band is 1.3 eV. The soft x-ray Raman scattering reflects the features due to the charge-transfer transition from O 2p valence band to Fe 3d conduction band. These findings are similar to the result of electronic structure calculation by density-functional theory within the local spin-density approximation that included the effect of Coulomb repulsion between localized d states.