Strain effects on multiferroic BiFeO3 films

The field of multiferroics has experienced a rapid progress resulting in the discovery of many new physical phenomena. BiFeO3 (BFO) compound, which is one of the few room-temperature single-phase multiferroics, has contributed subsequently to this progress. As a result, significant review articles have been devoted specifically to this famous system. This chapter is dedicated to the strain effects on the structure stability and property changes of BFO thin films. It is a short and non-exhaustive topical overview that may be seen as an invitation for interested readers to go beyond. There is a very active and prolific research in this field and we apologize to the authors whose relevant work is not cited here. After a short introduction, we will thus review the effect of strain on BFO films by describing the consequences on the structure and the phase transitions as well as on polar, magnetic and magnetoelectric properties. (C) 2015 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.