Stress induced enhanced polarization in multilayer BiFeO3/BaTiO3 structure with improved energy storage properties

Present work reports the fabrication of a multilayer (5-layer) structure of BiFeO3(BFO)/BaTiO3(BTO) using spin-coating technique. The crystallographic structure, surface morphology and ferroelectric behavior of multilayer structure in metal-ferroelectric-metal capacitor have been studied. Le-Bail refinement of X-ray diffraction data revealed the formation of polycrystalline pure perovskite phase with induced stress. The values of remnant (Pr) and saturation polarization (Ps) for BFO/BTO multilayer structure are found to be 38.14 degrees C/cm(2) and 71.54 degrees C/cm(2) respectively, which are much higher than the corresponding values reported for bare BFO thin film. A large value of dielectric constant of 187 has been obtained for multilayer structure with a low leakage current density of 1.09 x 10(-7) A/cm(2) at applied bias of 10 V. The BFO/BTO multilayer structure favors the enhanced energy storage capacity as compared to bare BFO thin film with improved values of energy-density and charge-discharge efficiency as 121 mJ/cm(3) and 59% respectively, suggesting futuristic energy storage applications. (C) 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.