Mesoporous bismuth ferrite with amplified magnetoelectric coupling and electric field-induced ferrimagnetism

Coupled ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials, known as multiferroics, are an important class of materials that allow magnetism to be manipulated through the application of electric fields. Bismuth ferrite, BiFeO3, is the most-studied intrinsic magnetoelectric multiferroic because it maintains both ferroelectric and magnetic ordering to well above room temperature. Here we report the use of epitaxy-free wet chemical methods to create strained nanoporous BiFeO3. We find that the strained material shows large changes in saturation magnetization on application of an electric field, changing from 0.04 to 0.84 mu(b) per Fe. For comparison, non-porous films produced using analogous methods change from just 0.002 to 0.01 mu(b) per Fe on application of the same electric field. The results indicate that nanoscale architecture can complement strain-layer epitaxy as a tool to strain engineer magnetoelectric materials.