Preparation and characterization of Zr4+-doped BiFeO3 ceramics

Zr4+ doped multi-ferroic BiFe1-xZrxO3 (BFZO, x=0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06,,0.08, 0.10) samples were prepared by a solid state reaction method. X-Ray diffraction results show that it is of rhombohedral structure and the unit cell parameters increase with the increase of Zr4+ doping concentration, which indicated that the Zr4+ doping ions were entered into the crystal lattice. It is also found that the leakage current of BFZO samples was greatly decreased by about 2 orders of magnitude comparing to that of the un-doped samples based on analysis of unsaturated ferroelectric hysteresis (P-E) loops and current density-electric field intensity (J-E) plots. According to the analysis of J-E plots and conduction mechanism, it is believed that the decrease of leakage current is due to the change in conduction mechanism and the competition of two different charge compensation ways. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.