Structural, electrical, optical and dielectric properties of sol-gel derived (1-x) BiFeO3 - (x) Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 novel multiferroics materials

In this work, a few compositions in the system (1-x) BiFeO3 - (x) Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O-3 named as (1-x) BFO - (x)PZT with range 0.0 <= x <= 0.40 were synthesized by sol-gel route. Rietveld analysis of X-ray diffraction data has revealed single phase formation of all these compositions. An effort has been made to correlate the results using our studies on micro-structural, electrical and optical properties of solid solution compounds. Temperature dependent dielectric constant and loss has been found to be improved with increasing dopant concentration (PZT) in BiFeO3. Temperature dependent conductivity behavior revealed that an Arrhenius type of thermally activated process in the low temperature region, followed by small polaron hopping and oxygen vacancy (singly and doubly) at intermediate and high temperature. Optical studies showed absorption of light in the visible region, with a blue shift in energy band gap with increasing concentration of PZT in BiFeO3 ceramics. Fourier transform infrared spectra showed that strong band corresponds to the Fe-O stretching and O-Fe-O bending vibrations. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.